"These results have major public health implications because they indicate that such methods, as currently per?¬formed, will not be suitable for the mass screening of newborns for congenital CMV infection ”the most common nongenetic cause of deafness in the United States," the authors write. "As the disease burden from congenital CMV infection remains a significant public health problem, there contin?¬ues to be a need to identify the large number of infants with clinically inapparent congenital CMV infection early in life. The results of our study under?¬score the need for further evaluation of high-throughput methods performed on saliva or other specimens that can be adapted to large-scale newborn CMV screening."(JAMA. 2010;303[14]:1375-1382. Available pre-embargo to the media at www.jamamedia)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, financial disclosures, funding and support, etc.

Editorial: Screening Newborns for Congenital Cytomegalovirus Infection

James F. Bale Jr., M.D., of the University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, writes in an accompanying editorial that these findings do not necessarily suggest that the goal of universal screening for CMV should be abandoned.

"Although current tissue culture methods are too time consuming and expensive to be used for mass screening of newborns, molecular detection methods can provide high-throughput screening for CMV. While assaying the newborn dried blood spot may not be the solution to the problem of universal screening for congenital CMV infection, detecting viral DNA in specimens obtained in the first few days of life may still be possible. Rather than assaying blood, one possible approach is to consider assaying a specimen of the infant's sa?¬liva. The saliva of virtually all congenially infected infants contains abundant quantities of CMV DNA that can be detected by current PCR methods."

Source: JAMA