Cytomegalovirus

Prenatal cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection, one of many maternal infectious diseases, is seen in 0.2 to 2.0% of all pregnancies. CMV infection in approximately 10% of infants infected prenatally becomes severe, and 35% of infected infants present with neurologic sequelae, such as hearing loss and developmental disabilities after birth and are often refractory to treatment. Moreover, even 10 to 15% of the asymptomatic infants progressively experience hearing loss and developmental disorders. Li shows that undifferentiated neurocytes in the ventricular zone (VZ) of the mouse brain are highly sensitive to CMV . The undifferentiated neuroepithelium of the VZ ventricular wall includes neural stem cells, which mediate not only selfreplication, but also differentiation of neurons and glial cells. It has been shown that when CMV infects undifferentiated neurons, along with reduced self-renewal capacity, it also inhibits the differentiation of glial cells into neurocytes. Although the in vivo infection dynamics of CMV in humans can only be conjectured on the basis of autopsy results, the glial cells of the ventricular wall in the brains of people infected with congenital CMV are known to be susceptible to viral infection, and it is possible that brain developmental disabilities are caused by the resulting suppression of proliferation and differentiation. Accordingly, early treatment is necessary when fetal CMV infection is detected, and if possible, prenatal treatment is preferable. The Value of Neuron-specific Enolase and Cytokines from Umbilical Blood in Cytomegalovirus Infected Fetuses: Masashi Yoshido, Hideo Matsuda and Kenichi Furuya

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Last date updated on April, 2024