Sex could play bigger role in Zika infections, experts say
Although the virus had been flushed out from the blood and urine of an infected individual, Zika would remain in a woman’s vaginal fluid for up to two months and in a man’s semen for six months.
“Those who had symptoms of fever and rashes in the past two weeks should get themselves checked and practise safe sex,” he said.
Dr Jeyaindran said women who had been infected with Zika, although fully cured, should defer any plans of getting pregnant for three months and that they should practise safe sex.
Men, on the other hand, must practise safe sex for six months after they had been infected.
“These extreme precautionary measures are necessary as it has not been ascertained the degree of which the virus can be transmitted effectively through vaginal fluid and semen,” he said.
If a patient has unprotected sex, he or she will pass on the virus to their partner. Pregnant women are open to the risk of microcephaly and other birth defects to their unborn child.
The ministry’s director-general Datuk Dr Noor Hisham Abdullah said the sexual transmission of the virus can only occur if the person had been tested positive of the virus.
He said the ministry continued to press on vector control to stop the spread of the virus.
He said if the breeding grounds of the Aedes mosquitoes were eradicated, there would be no dengue, no Zika and no chikungunya.
“Rather than focusing on what happens after one is bitten by a mosquito, we should focus on getting rid of the insect as prevention is better than cure,” he said.
Ten countries — Argentina, Canada, Chile, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal and the continental United States — reported infections that were almost passed two fold via sex, reported The New York Times recently.
Even after removing pregnant women from the data, the researchers found women were 90 per cent more likely than men their age to be infected. To adjust for doctor-visit differences, the team compared the current Zika outbreak to two outbreaks of dengue, which is not sexually transmitted.
Even after that adjustment, said Flavio C. Coelho, a Vargas Foundation biostatistician and the lead author, women were still 60 per cent more likely than men to be infected with the Zika virus. Sexual transmission, he said, “was the most probable cause.”
The paper’s “very intriguing” conclusions “merit further study,” said Dr John T. Brooks, an expert on the sexual transmission of disease at the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
A virologist who studies the illness believes sexual transmission of Zika could be just as big of a factor, especially in the United States.
“Sexual transmission of this virus is going to become probably more important to us in the US than the mosquito transmission,” said Sara Ziegler, a PhD researcher at Southern Research in Birmingham.
Source : Malay Mail Online | All http://ift.tt/2bRywXE
Today updated news promoted by Mukah Pages
Post a Comment