With the number of "homegrown" Zika cases rising in the  U.S., the focus is largely on the birth defects it can cause in children born to pregnant women infected by the virus. But Zika is also linked to other life-threatening ailments that put everyone at risk, a top expert says.

“Most people who get Zika get over it quickly but the virus can also cause neurological complications that could cause long-term consequences and even death,” Dr. Lee Norman tells Newsmax Health.

Zika-infected mosquitoes transmit the disease. People traveling outside the U.S. have brought in most cases in this country, but now illness caused by local mosquitoes are cropping up.

But 17 local cases have been confirmed in Florida and state officials said Tuesday they are investigating four additional suspected cases. Officials believe all local cases have occurred in Miami-Dade County, but other travel-related cases have shown up in Broward, Palm Beach, and other counties.

Wynwood, a one-mile area in Miami, is home to the largest cluster of 13 "homegrown" cases.

Zika can cause microcephaly, a dreaded birth defect that causes babies to be born with small heads. But Zika also causes or is suspected in a growing list of other neurological problems that can affect anyone, says Norman, senior vice president and chief medical officer at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City, Kan.

Zika is a confirmed cause of Guillain-Barré syndrome, a serious autoimmune disorder.

“Most people get over it completely, but some others have to deal with it their whole lives,” says Norman, who is also an intelligence officer specializing in disaster medicine planning in the U.S. Army National Guard and reports to the director of Homeland Security.

There are also preliminary reports linking Zika to other neurological ailments, which have prompted scientists to consider whether the virus may infect nerves directly in adults, as well as fetuses. These include neurological problems that Brazilian researchers reported at an American Academy of Neurology meeting in April in Vancouver. 

The researchers presented a study that included six people who developed neurological problems following Zika infection.  Of the six, four had Guillain-Barré, but the other two developed acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM), which causes a swelling of the brain and spinal cord.

ADEM is similar to multiple sclerosis, and most people recover from it. But in some cases the disease can recur.

Indeed, when they were discharged from the hospital, five of the six people in the new study still had problems with motor functioning. One person had vision problems and one had problems with memory and thinking skills, say the researchers who called for more studies to find out if Zika has different effects on the brain.

Such a possibility also worries Norman.

“I run our biothreat team, which is the group of us that gets together monthly to look at diseases, and when I brought up Zika this past January, everybody looked at me kind of cross-eyed. [But] by February everything had broken loose,” he says.

In fact, Zika is so new that Norman is more concerned about what is not known about the virus's health threats than what scientists already know.

“Zika is belongs to the same family of viruses that causes West Nile virus and we see awful neurological [problems] with that, including death and permanent paralytic [reactions], so I don’t take anything for granted," he says. "We need to find out all we can about this virus.”

Norman is concerned that Zika may act like the dengue virus. The first time someone is bitten by a dengue-infected mosquito, it doesn’t cause much of a problem. But the body builds up antibodies, and that’s when the problem happens, says Norman.

“When people get dengue for the first time, they are asymptomatic, but if they get bitten again, they develop a sub-type that causes dengue hemorrhagic fever, which can result in bleeding and even death. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out Zika turns out to have subtypes. That’s a very big risk,” he says. 

Florida may be the only state where transmission by local mosquitoes is occurring, but there are currently at least a few cases of travel-related Zika in almost every state in the U.S., with the exception of Alaska, South Dakota, Idaho and Wyoming, according the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Here are Norman’s tips for staying safe in areas where high concentrations of Zika are currently occurring:

• If you are pregnant, avoid traveling or vacationing to the areas where infection is currently occurring. In Florida, for instance, this would not include the whole state, but it would include Wynwood, where infection is actively occurring.
• Wear protective clothing, including long sleeves and pants.
• Stay inside, or in areas that are screened in.
• Use an effective insect repellent; those containing DEET are best.