چکیده (انگلیسی):

There has been a growing concern over Zika virus (ZIKV) infection, particularly since a probablelink between ZIKV infection during pregnancy and microcephaly in the baby was identified. The presentstudy aimed to estimate a theoretical risk of microcephaly during pregnancy with ZIKV infection inNortheastern Brazil in 2015.Methods: Temporal distributions of microcephaly, reported dengue-like illness and dengue seropositivein Brazil were extracted from secondary data sources. Using an integral equation model and a backcal-culation technique, we estimated the risk of microcephaly during pregnancy with Zika virus infection.Results: If the fraction of Zika virus infections among a total of seronegative dengue-like illness cases is30%, the risk of microcephaly following infection during the first trimester was estimated at 46.7% (95%CI: 9.1, 84.2), comparable to the risk of congenital rubella syndrome. However, the risk of microcephalywas shown to vary widely from 14.0% to 100%. The mean gestational age at delivery with microcephalywas estimated at 37.5 weeks (95% CI: 36.9, 39.3).Conclusions: The time interval between peaks of reported dengue-like illness and microcephaly wasconsistent with cause–outcome relationship. Our modeling framework predicts that the incidence ofmicrocephaly is expected to steadily decline in early 2016, Brazil.© 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-NDlicense (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).