Abstract
Objective: With an incidence of 0.2–2.5%, congenital cytomegalovirus infection (CCMVI) is one of the most frequently encountered prenatal infections. It has been reported that approximately 90% of CCMVI infants exhibit no apparent manifestations, which is termed asymptomatic CCMVI, while the remaining 10% of CCMVI infants are symptomatic and display abnormal test findings. Recently, late-onset symptomatic CCMVI has been described as hearing loss or developmental abnormalities not in the newborn period, but instead during infancy or young childhood. Therefore, early diagnosis and prompt treatment of this condition is important. We herein present our ongoing prospective study on screening tests for CCMVI. Methods: A total of 3072 infants who were delivered at one of our associated institutes between February 2013 and March 2015 were enrolled. Along with newborn mass screening, several drops of blood were collected using FTA cards from which DNA was extracted and examined for CMV DNA load by real-time PCR. In cases where CMV DNA was serologically detected, we confirmed the diagnosis of CCMVI by testing for CMV DNA in preserved dried umbilical cord samples. Results: Eight infants were diagnosed as having CCMVI (0.26% incidence). Of the four who received detailed examination, two were asymptomatic, one had unilateral hearing loss and microcephaly, and one had ventricular dilatation as detected by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Discussion: We observed the overall incidence of CCMVI to be comparable with that in previous reports. However, the presence of symptomatic cases was relatively higher, and one patient had the silent symptom of abnormal MRI findings. Thus, newborn screening for CCMVI and subsequent detailed examination may be useful for early CMV detection and intervention.
