Antenatal and Newborn Screening for congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV)

Project overview 

To help update the UK NSC guidance by looking at studies on screening pregnant women for CMV or newborn babies for cCMV to try to assess whether a screening programme could reduce the long-term health burden caused by cCMV infection.

Status: ongoing

Contact: mark.simmonds@york.ac.uk

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What is the problem?

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a common virus which can cause flu-like symptoms. Around half of the UK population is infected by CMV at some point in their life and symptoms are usually mild. However, if the virus is passed on to a fetus during pregnancy, the baby may be born with CMV infection, called congenital CMV (cCMV). Around 2,400 babies are born with cCMV every year in the UK. Most have no symptoms, but around 10% have symptoms at birth and around half of these babies will develop long-term complications. In addition, around 10% of those without early symptoms will develop problems later. Around 200 babies born with cCMV each year in the UK will have long-term complications, such as hearing loss and neurodevelopmental problems, including cerebral palsy, epilepsy, autism, attention and learning difficulties and visual impairment, in the most severely affected infants.

The UK National Screening Committee (NSC) does not currently recommend screening pregnant women for CMV or newborn babies for cCMV. This is because previous assessments did not find any large, high-quality studies showing that screening would be worthwhile. No reliable screening test for CMV infection during pregnancy was identified, nor any treatment to prevent the baby getting CMV infection from their mother. Newborn screening was not recommended because it was not clear how to identify which babies would develop long-term complications, and treatment options for babies with no symptoms or minimal symptoms were unclear. 

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What are we doing?

The aim of this project is to help update the UK NSC guidance by looking at studies on screening pregnant women for CMV or newborn babies for cCMV to try to assess whether a screening programme could reduce the long-term health burden caused by cCMV infection. We will review existing clinical studies to assess whether screening tests for newborn babies (up to 28 days old) can identify which babies are likely to develop long-term complications and would benefit from early treatment. We will also produce an ‘evidence map’ of all studies that have assessed screening for CMV in pregnant women and studies of treatments for pregnant women to prevent cCMV, or cCMV-related complications. An evidence map is a type of first stage review to see whether enough studies exist to justify a more in-depth review.