Zika virus infection in pregnancy is "the most likely explanation" behind congenital brain abnormalities in babies including microcephaly, the World Health Organization says. Another study also describes the effect of Zika virus infection in the eyes of mouse fetuses, newborns and adults.
Brazil has confirmed 1,709 cases of microcephaly among newborns potentially linked to the Zika virus, including 102 deaths, in the past nine months, said the Health Ministry.
The first to be confirmed in the country since the infection began to spread there late last year.
There was now enough evidence to definitively say that the Zika virus could cause unusually small heads and brain damage in infants born to infected mothers.
Brazil's Health Ministry confirmed Thursday the death of a third adult due to the Zika virus. Although the 20-year-old woman in the northern state of Rio Grande do Norte died in April 2015, the results of tests were just revealed.
An expert from World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said Brazil reported 10-fold Zika-linked microcephaly cases than average, following the UN health agency declared the cluster of microcephaly and other neurological disorders in relation to the Zika virus as public health emergency of international concern.
Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff Monday declared the Zika virus an "imminent danger" to public health, giving the government more power to contain an epidemic that has already led to over 4,000 birth defects.
There are thousands of these children in Brazil, and scientists fear thousands more might come as the Zika virus leaps across Latin America and the Caribbean.
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