Clinical aspects of the oral cavity of patients with congenital Zika syndrome: literature review / Aspectos clínicos da cavidade oral de pacientes com a síndrome congênita do zika: revisão da literatura

Abstract

The Zika virus belongs to the family Flaviviridae, genus Flavivirus and was discovered in 1947 in the rhésus monkeys in the Zika forest in Uganda in Africa. In the 1970s the virus spread and reached Indonesia, India, Pakistan and Malaysia. Its main vector in Brazil is the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Between late 2014 and early 2015, an outbreak of an exanthematic disease clinically different from dengue arose. Confirmation of the presence of Zika virus in Brazil took place in March 2015. Coincidentally in August of the same year, children with neonatal microcephaly began to be born in the states of northeastern Brazil. Given this unknown outbreak of microcephaly, the Ministry of Health has declared a national emergency. Soon after, a causal relationship was established between the Zika virus and the series of congenital changes that was later called Congenital Zika Syndrome. The present study focused on the following guiding question: Are there oral clinical changes in patients with Congenital Zika Syndrome? Aiming to report the clinical aspects of the oral cavity in patients with Congenital Zika Syndrome, through a bibliographic survey. This is a literature review, conducted in publications made from 2014, using the search platforms PubMed, Lilacs, Scielo, VHL and Google Scholar. These results indicate that there may be changes in the oral cavity in children with congenital Zika syndrome. Because it is a newfound syndrome, data regarding oral clinical findings in children with congenital Zika syndrome are few and still need to be further researched.

Keywords

• microcephaly
• zika virus
• oral health