Chickengunya and Birth Defects in Greneda

   Chickungunya, the alphavirus transmitted by Aedes agepti mosquitos, has quickly spread around the world since 2013. The virus is characterized by fever, macupopular rash and joint pain that can las from months to years.  Although this Togavirus causes extreme amounts of pain for some individuals its spread was largely eclipsed by the Zika epidemic that spread around the world at around the same time. Zika controlled the headlines because Zika was associated with birth defects, there is some work that Chickungunya would do the same. 
    Chickungunya first entered the Americas in 2014 with an infection on the island of St Martin.  It quickly spread across the Caribbean and into some parts of Florida. An ongoing longitudinal study by Priyanka Suresh looked at if CHKV was responsible for any teratogenic effects by looking at the CHKV outbreak on the island of Grenada.
    65% of the people on the island of Grenada, with a population of 101,000 people,  have been infected with CHKV. In the study women that were infected during pregnancy (n= 156) were tracked and then their babies tested for a variety of birth defects.  The study, which is still not complete showed that while babies did not have significantly more microcephaly as did babies with Zika infection, but there was a significantly amount more neonatal complications in infected mothers  (26% complications) than those that were not infected with CHKV (7% complications).
    While the study is still not complete and has a small sample size it shows that there may be birth complications due to CHKV infection that need to be studied more.

- Chris LeBoa

I wrote this while at this talk: https://globalhealth.stanford.edu/research/ResearchConvening2018/abstracts.html#1oral