Reply to scary virus for those planning travel to Latin America or the Caribbean

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[quote=Anonymous]I work for an organization with a lot of international travel and this is the advice I got:

Here, also, is more extensive information from an evidence based medicine database of research on safety of DEET in pregnancy

Use in pregnancy – The recommendations for DEET use in pregnant and lactating women do not differ from those for nonpregnant adults [19]. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has advised pregnant women to take precautions to reduce their risk of acquiring arboviral infections (eg, West Nile virus) by avoiding mosquito bites through use of protective clothing and DEET-based repellents [23].
First trimester exposure of rats and rabbits to DEET did not result in an increased risk of malformations in offspring, although one study using a dose several-fold higher than the normal human dose reported an increase in low birth weight [24]. There are no human data for first trimester exposure. A double-blind, randomized, therapeutic trial of insect repellents for the prevention of malaria in 897 pregnant women did not find any adverse neurologic, gastrointestinal, or dermatologic effects in women who applied a median total DEET dose of 214 g per pregnancy (range = 0 to 345 g) [25]. No adverse effects were noted on fetal/infant survival, growth, or development up to one year of age. DEET was detected in four cord blood samples from a randomly selected subgroup of 50 DEET users.

Other precautions you should take include wearing long sleeves and pants to the degree possible, treating your clothing with permethrin before you travel (which will last through several washes), and avoiding being outdoors during peak mosquito biting times (daytime and early evening are when these mosquitos bite) to the extent possible. If your travel is primarily going to be in capital cities, your risks may be more limited. Of all the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, Brazil has been the hardest hit, with up to a million cases. El Salvador and Colombia have numbers in the low thousands.

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