CYTOMEGALOVIREMIA IN HEALTHY ASYMPTOMATIC PREGNANT ADOLESCENTS

Based upon clinical observations it has been deduced that human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) may be transmitted with blood. It has been estimated that approximately 5% of healthy individuals are asymptomatic carriers of HCMV in blood. Although isolation of this virus from blood is relatively easily accomplished in immunosuppressed individuals or from those with symptomatic HCMV-associated clinical conditions, efforts to recover virus from the blood of asymptomatic healthy carriers have been largely and repeatedly unsuccessful. Only one report has documented viremia in healthy individuals (in 1969 Diosi and associates reported recovery of HCMV from blood in 2 of 35 blood bank donors).¶In the course of studies of healthy pregnant adolescents in North Carolina and in Maryland, HCMV was recovered from the blood in 5 of 96 and 2 of 41 subjects respectively, or 5% in each population. There was no demonstrable association with prenatal transmission of HCMV, with subject well-being or outcome of pregnancy.¶The risk of HCMV reactivation in young pregnant women may relate to gestational and endocrine factors. It is also possible that reactivation of HCMV occurs most frequently soon after primary infection and that the risk of reactivation is inversely related to the elapsed time since virus acquisition. These observations may assist in defining risk factors for transfusion-related transmission as well as for reactivation and prenatal acquistion of HCMV.