Prenatal exposure to viruses capable of infecting the fetal brain, particularly in the first trimester, can cause a range of developmental defects in the baby. The Zika epidemic in Brazil during 2015-2016 posed an extreme case, causing hundreds of babies to be born with microcephaly, or an abnormally small head.
Although cases have waned significantly, “the medical community agrees Zika could come back at any time, in any place where the mosquitoes that spread it live,” says Ganeshwaran Mochida, MD, MMSc, a specialist in microcephaly at Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of Boston Children’s Division of Genetics and Genomics.
