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Public health and laboratory considerations regarding newborn screening for congenital cytomegalovirus

  • Newborn screening
  • Published:
Journal of Inherited Metabolic Disease

Abstract

Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is the most common infection in newborns worldwide and causes hearing loss and other neurological disability in 15–20% of infected infants. Only about half of the hearing loss resulting from congenital CMV infection is currently detected by universal newborn hearing screening because of late-onset hearing loss. Thus, much of the hearing loss and the majority of other CMV-associated disabilities remain undetected for years after birth and are never connected to CMV infection. Congenital CMV may be appropriate to include in national newborn screening (NBS) programs because it is more common than other disorders tested for by NBS programs and is a major cause of disability. Significant obstacles to the implementation of screening for congenital CMV include the lack of a standardized, high-throughput screening test and a protocol for follow-up of CMV-infected children. Nonetheless, screening newborns for congenital CMV infection merits further consideration.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Stephanie Bialek, Krista Biernath, John Eichwald, and Scott Schmid for helpful comments on a previous version of this manuscript, and Toni Roberson for assistance preparing the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1600 Clifton RD NE, Mailstop G18, Atlanta, GA, 30333, USA

    Sheila C. Dollard

  2. Department of Pediatrics, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Mark R. Schleiss

  3. National Center for Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Scott D. Grosse

Authors
  1. Sheila C. Dollard
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  2. Mark R. Schleiss
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  3. Scott D. Grosse
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sheila C. Dollard.

Additional information

Communicated by: Rodney Pollitt

Competing interest: None declared.

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Dollard, S.C., Schleiss, M.R. & Grosse, S.D. Public health and laboratory considerations regarding newborn screening for congenital cytomegalovirus. J Inherit Metab Dis 33 (Suppl 2), 249–254 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10545-010-9125-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10545-010-9125-3

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