Larvicide, not Zika virus, is the real cause behind Brazil's microcephaly outbreak, Argentinian doctors claim
- 8 years ago
BRASILIA — The Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul on Sunday announced that it had suspended the use of a larvicide used to control mosquitos that carry the Zika virus, after a group of Argentinian physicians posited a link between the chemical and the rise in cases of microcephaly in Brazil, Spanish news agency EFE reported.
Doctors from the Argentina-based group, called Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns, are challenging the theory that the Zika virus is behind the microcephaly outbreak in Brazil. They question whether the birth defect may instead be caused by Pyriproxyfen, a chemical larvicide that has been injected in Brazil's water supplies since 2014.
According to a report by the Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns group, Pyriproxyfen was used in Brazil in a massive government-run program aimed at controlling the development of Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae in drinking water tanks. In the state of Pernambuco, for example, where the Brazilian Health Ministry has injected pyriproxyfen into reservoirs due to the proliferation of the mosquito, nearly 4,000 children have shown congenital malformations, "especially microcephaly," the report said.
Since October of 2015, Brazil has reported 4,180 cases of microcephaly. However, according to a report in the Washington Post, experts who scrutinized 732 of these cases found out that only 270 appeared to be linked to Zika. The rest were not microcephaly or were not linked to Zika.
The Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns group noted in its report that in countries such as Colombia, where Zika is present, no cases of microcephaly linked to the virus have been reported.
Sumitomo Chemicals, the company associated with Monsanto that produces the larvicide, which is sold as Sumilarv, wrote on its website that pyriproxyfen poses minimal risk to birds, fish and mammals.
On Monday, Brazil's federal government dismissed a link between Zika and Pyriproxyfen, according to a report in Britain's Telegraph.
"Unlike the relationship between the Zika virus and microcephaly, which has had its confirmation shown in tests that indicated the presence of the virus in samples of blood, tissue and amniotic fluid, the association between the use of pyriproxyfen and microcephaly has no scientific basis," the government said in a statement. "It's important to state that some localities that do not use pyriproxyfen also had reported cases of microcephaly."
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Doctors from the Argentina-based group, called Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns, are challenging the theory that the Zika virus is behind the microcephaly outbreak in Brazil. They question whether the birth defect may instead be caused by Pyriproxyfen, a chemical larvicide that has been injected in Brazil's water supplies since 2014.
According to a report by the Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns group, Pyriproxyfen was used in Brazil in a massive government-run program aimed at controlling the development of Aedes aegypti mosquito larvae in drinking water tanks. In the state of Pernambuco, for example, where the Brazilian Health Ministry has injected pyriproxyfen into reservoirs due to the proliferation of the mosquito, nearly 4,000 children have shown congenital malformations, "especially microcephaly," the report said.
Since October of 2015, Brazil has reported 4,180 cases of microcephaly. However, according to a report in the Washington Post, experts who scrutinized 732 of these cases found out that only 270 appeared to be linked to Zika. The rest were not microcephaly or were not linked to Zika.
The Physicians in Crop-Sprayed Towns group noted in its report that in countries such as Colombia, where Zika is present, no cases of microcephaly linked to the virus have been reported.
Sumitomo Chemicals, the company associated with Monsanto that produces the larvicide, which is sold as Sumilarv, wrote on its website that pyriproxyfen poses minimal risk to birds, fish and mammals.
On Monday, Brazil's federal government dismissed a link between Zika and Pyriproxyfen, according to a report in Britain's Telegraph.
"Unlike the relationship between the Zika virus and microcephaly, which has had its confirmation shown in tests that indicated the presence of the virus in samples of blood, tissue and amniotic fluid, the association between the use of pyriproxyfen and microcephaly has no scientific basis," the government said in a statement. "It's important to state that some localities that do not use pyriproxyfen also had reported cases of microcephaly."
-------------------------------------------------------------
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