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October 1, 2016

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Father’s tears may have infected son

A 38-year-old US man may have been infected with the Zika virus through the tears or sweat of his dying father, researchers said. If confirmed, it would be the first documented case of such transmission.

The man in the western state of Utah became ill after helping to take care of his 73-year-old father, who was hospitalized in June with Zika after being infected during a trip to his native Mexico.

The known transmission methods — being bitten by an infected mosquito, or sex with an infected person — were ruled out for the son, according to a case study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

He had wiped his father’s eyes and helped a nurse reposition him in bed without using gloves, the journal said. He never came into contact with his father’s blood or other body fluids.

Tests found an unusually high concentration of Zika in the father’s blood, more than 100,000 times greater than levels in other patients, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The high level could explain “how the second patient may have contracted the virus by casual contact from the primary patient, the first such documented case,” said the University of Utah School of Medicine, where both patients were treated.




 

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