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LETTER
Prevention of postnatal cytomegalovirus infection in preterm infants
  1. M Sharland1,
  2. M Khare1,
  3. A Bedford-Russell2
  1. 1Paediatric Infectious Diseases Unit, St George's Hospital, London SW17 0QT, UK; msharlan@sghms.ac.uk
  2. 2Neonatal Unit, St George's Hospital

    https://doi.org/10.1136/fn.86.2.F140

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      Preterm infants can acquire cytomegalovirus (CMV) from the breast milk of their CMV seropositive mothers. Postnatal CMV infection may be asymptomatic, but infants may develop pneumonitis, or sepsis syndrome. Hamprecht et al1 recently studied the transmission of cytomegalovirus from CMV seropositive mothers to preterm infants who were exposed to maternal breast milk. Some 96% of seropositive breastfeeding mothers had selective re-activation of CMV in their breast milk with an incidence of acquired CMV infection in the neonatal unit of 22%. This rate of CMV acquisition in the neonatal unit appeared to be high in comparison with the experience of our own unit, which takes preventive measures against CMV.

      We therefore performed a prospective study from 1 July 1999 to …

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