Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Oct 30;16(11):1698.
doi: 10.3390/v16111698.

Congenital and Perinatal Viral Infections: Consequences for the Mother and Fetus

Mariam Al Beloushi  1   2 , Huda Saleh  1   2 , Badreldeen Ahmed  2   3   4 , Justin C Konje  3   4   5
Affiliations
Review

Congenital and Perinatal Viral Infections: Consequences for the Mother and Fetus

Mariam Al Beloushi et al. Viruses. .

Abstract

Viruses are the most common congenital infections in humans and an important cause of foetal malformations, neonatal morbidity, and mortality. The effects of these infections, which are transmitted in utero (transplacentally), during childbirth or in the puerperium depend on the timing of the infections. These vary from miscarriages (usually with infections in very early pregnancy), congenital malformations (when the infections occur during organogenesis) and morbidity (with infections occurring late in pregnancy, during childbirth or after delivery). The most common of these viruses are cytomegalovirus, hepatitis, herpes simplex type-2, parvovirus B19, rubella, varicella zoster and zika viruses. There are currently very few efficacious antiviral agents licensed for use in pregnancy. For most of these infections, therefore, prevention is mainly by vaccination (where there is a vaccine). The administration of immunoglobulins to those exposed to the virus to offer passive immunity or appropriate measures to avoid being infected would be options to minimise the infections and their consequences. In this review, we discuss some of the congenital and perinatal infections and their consequences on both the mother and fetus and their management focusing mainly on prevention.

Keywords: congenital and perinatal infections; cytomegalovirus; hepatitis virus; herpes simplex type-2 virus; parvovirus B19 virus; rubella virus; varicella and zika virus; vertical transmission.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Authors Mariam Al Beloushi and Huda Saleh were employed by the company Hamad Medical Corporation. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Cartoon of typical enveloped and non-enveloped viruses. Note that these do not reflect all the different forms of DNA/RNA (which maybe Double/single strained, circular linear etc.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Overview of the effects of viral infections in pregnancy on the mother and fetus/neonate.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Right shows routes of viral transmission to the fetus and (b) left shows how some viruses may reach the fetus. Some may infect the maternal decidual cells and then invade cytotrophoblast (CTB) cell columns and then traverse into the villi across fetal blood vessel into the fetal circulation or attach to fetal Hofbauer cells in the villous stroma. Others may traverse these barriers into the fetal circulation without infected the cells, The precise mechanism for most of these is not well understood. Abbreviations: CTB: cytotrophoblast; AV: anchoring villi; BV: blood vessel; EG: endometrial gland; FV: floating villi; LV: lymphatic vessel.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Auruti C., De Rose D.U., Santisi A., Martini L., Piersigilli F., Bersani I., Ronchetti M.P., Caforio L. Pregnancy and viral infections; Mechanisms of foetal damage, diagnosis, and prevention of neonatal adverse outcomes from cytomegalovirus to SARS-CoV-2 and Zika virus. Biochim. Biophys. Acta (BBA) Mol. Basis Dis. 2021;1867:166198 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Simon N.P. What Is a Congenital Infection? Emory University School of Medicine. 2023. [(accessed on 6 December 2023)]. Available online: https://med.emory.edu/departments/pediatrics/divisions/neonatology/dpc/c....
    1. Donovan M.F., Cascella M., Embryology, Weeks 6–8 StatPearls. [(accessed on 6 December 2023)];2022 Available online: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK563181/
    1. Pereira L. Congenital Viral Infection: Traversing the Uterine-Placental Interface. Annu. Rev. Virol. 2018;5:273–299. doi: 10.1146/annurev-virology-092917-043236. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Megli C.J., Coyne C.B. Infections at the maternal-fetal interface: An overview of pathogenesis and defefence. Nat. Rev. Microbiol. 2022;20:67–82. doi: 10.1038/s41579-021-00610-y. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

MeSH terms

Substances

LinkOut - more resources