Congenital Hearing Loss and CMV Infection

Six percent of infants with confirmed hearing impairment had CMV infections.

Congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is associated with sensorineural hearing loss and is the leading nongenetic cause of hearing impairment in infants, but the majority of newborns infected with CMV do not have any clinical signs of CMV disease. To examine the incidence of CMV infection among infants with hearing loss, researchers reviewed the charts of 79,047 infants who were born at one hospital in Texas during a 5-year period in which urine cultures for CMV were performed in all newborns who did not pass hearing screening tests.

Of 572 newborns who did not pass screening tests, 256 infants (0.3% of those screened) had hearing loss that was confirmed by subsequent testing. CMV infection was detected in 16 of these patients (6% of in…

Reviewing Authors

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)

Peggy Sue Weintrub, MD