The Zika virus could also spread through sweat and tears
According to doctors, the Zika virus could also spread in tears and sweat. A Utah School of Medicine team of researchers believes that the Utah case of a senior man that infected his adult son just before he did, has no other explanation.
The worse news, according to specialists is that the 73-year-old infected patient suffered from no illness before he died because of Zika infection. It could only mean that the virus might also kill individuals who are not ill and frail.
The case was described by Dr. Sankar Swaminathan and his colleagues in detail.
The elderly citizen was the first to die because of the virus in the 50 US states. The research team noted that the 73-year-old patient was recently treated for prostate cancer, but the disease was not making him especially ill.
The patient returned from a 3-week journey to the southwest coast of Mexico. The area had been reported with the Zika virus. According to the researchers, he did not feel ill during his trip but has reported being bitten by mosquitos. When the senior man started developing symptoms like diarrhea and muscle pain, the team believed he suffered from dengue which is a very similar disease also spread by the same mosquito.
Unfortunately, four days after being admitted, the patient died of kidney and respiratory failure, and only the later tests showed that the man, in fact, suffered from Zika virus. However, the amount of the virus found in his system was incredibly high, thousand of times greater than usual.
After the patient had passed away, his 38-year-old son developed the rash which is a characteristic of Zika. He has admitted to helping a nurse reposition his father in the bed without using gloves. Besides wiping his father’s eyes during hospitalization and helping the nurse reposition the old citizen, he had no other contact with fluids and blood, according to the team. Swaminathan’s team concluded that because the older man had enormous amounts of the virus in his system, it could have also be found in the man’s tears and sweat, both of wich the younger man contacted without gloves.
Ebola cases have also spread through sweat in recent findings due to the high amounts of the virus in the blood. Also like Ebola, the Zika virus has been found in the eyes of patients.
Image source: Flickr
Deborah Campbell
