A clinical study of cytomegalovirus infections during pregnancy

Abstract

Enzyme-linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA) was adopted to detect the human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) specific IgG, IgM in the blood samples of 216 pregnant women and the umbilical cord blood, as well as the HCMV antigen in the urine specimens of 91 newborn infants. Emphasis was put on the occurrence of cytomegalovirus infection during pregnancy and influence on both the mother and the infant. Our experimental results showed that HCMV IgG positive rate in the maternal sera as well as in cord sera was 93.98%; HCMV IgM positive rates were 8.8% in maternal sera and 3.7% in cord sera, respectively. In maternal sera IgG-positive group, 31.6% cord sera showed also HCMV IgG positive results. In 91 urine specimens of newborn infants, HCMV-Ag positive specimens accounted for 10.98% (10 cases). The rates of abortion, congenital malformation, stillbirth, premature fetal death, and intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) were all apparently higher in the HCMV-IgM positive pregnant group than in the HCMV-IgM negative group. The infants of HCMV-IgM positive mothers also showed lower birth weight, height, biparietal diameter, suboccipitobregmatic diameter, occipitofronatal diameter, occipito-mental diameter than the infants of HCMV-IgM negative mothers. Meanwhile, the growth and development indices of the former showed a tendency to decrease. Placenta histological examination showed that HCMV-IgM positive group had a higher incidence of pathological changes than HCMV-IgM negative group. Altogether, there were 8 cases of congenital infections.