The first uterus transplant to be performed in the United States failed after the recipient suffered complications that prompted doctors to remove the organ, the Cleveland Clinic said on Wednesday.

"We are saddened to share that our patient, Lindsey, recently experienced a sudden complication that led to the removal of her transplanted uterus," the hospital said in a statement that did not give the patient's last name.

Global health experts agreed Wednesday to prioritise developing vaccines against the Zika virus suspected of causing birth defects, but a Brazilian specialist warned that doing so would take at least three years.

"Perhaps in three years we will have a vaccine," Jorge Kalil, head of the Butantan Institute in Sao Paulo, told reporters in Geneva, acknowledging that even that estimate was "optimistic".

A Dutchman dubbed the "dentist of horror" by French media went on trial Tuesday after allegedly causing horrific injuries to the mouths of more than 100 patients in France.

Jacobus van Nierop, 51, ripped out healthy teeth and left dozens of patients in the rural central village of Chateau-Chinon with broken jaws, recurrent abscesses and septicemia.

The Zika virus, suspected of causing brain damage in babies and a neurological ailment in adults, has now also been linked to the paralyzing disorder myelitis, French researchers said Tuesday.

A 15-year-old girl diagnosed with acute myelitis in January had high levels of Zika in her cerebrospinal fluid, blood and urine, said Annie Lannuzel of the University Hospital Center Pointe-a-Pitre in Guadeloupe.

Scientists on Friday said they had found the first evidence of a biological link between the Zika virus sweeping Latin America and microcephaly, a severe deformation of the brain among newborns.

Laboratory tests found that the virus targeted key cells involved in brain development and then destroyed or disabled them, they said.

A study published this week was the strongest piece of evidence yet that that the Zika virus causes the neurological disorder Guillain-Barre Syndrome, but more research was needed, the U.N. said Friday. 

The deputy chief of the World Health Organization, Bruce Aylward, said the study from the medical journal Lancet which focused on a small sample of people in French Polynesia provided compelling evidence that Zika triggers the syndrome.

Google on Thursday said that it is working with UNICEF to map the spread of Zika and pitching in a million dollars to support the group's efforts on the ground.

A volunteer team of Google engineers, designers and data scientists is helping UNICEF build a computer platform to analyze data from sources such as weather and travel patterns to predict potential outbreaks, the director of the Internet giant's charitable arm said in a blog post.

Cuba has detected the first case of Zika in a Venezuelan doctor who came to the island for postgraduate studies, the health ministry said Wednesday.

The 28-year-old woman, who arrived in Cuba on February 21, is hospitalized at the Pedro Kouri Tropical Medicine Institute in the capital Havana.

Scientists have been telling Americans about the benefits of healthy eating for decades, and yet more Americans are obese than ever -- more than a third of the country.

Now, researchers at Harvard and Tufts Universities have laid out concrete steps officials can take by linking food prices to health effects.

Brazil has confirmed 641 cases of microcephaly and 139 babies with the birth defect who have died since the Zika virus outbreak started in October, the Health Ministry said Tuesday.

The latest figure was up 10 percent over the number of microcephaly cases reported by the ministry last week.