LAUSR

Background The association between Zika virus (ZIKV) infection in pregnancy with neurological abnormalities such as microcephaly, brain calcifications, epilepsy, eye and hearing impairments, and developmental delays has been described in recent years [1–3]. Despite several published studies reporting development delays in children after prenatal exposure to ZIKV, several doubts remain and hinder ongoing studies, mainly related to the absence of serological tests capable of identifying asymptomatic cases, making it difficult to implement unexposed groups in the cohorts [1–4]. This is further complicated by the difficulty of diagnosing ZIKV infection retrospectively, because of the narrow period of viremia and short-lived immunoglobulin M (IgM) responses, plus serologic cross-reactivity with dengue virus, highly prevalent in many countries [4, 5].