https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/misc-eme...nd-more-babies-born-cytomegalovirus-infection
Universal screening could find more babies born with cytomegalovirus infection, researchers say
Meghan Holohan
Today at 2:02 p.m.
Misc Emerging Topics
“They said, ‘Third baby, quick labor; it was probably just bruising from coming down the birth canal,” Longo, 35, from Swedesboro, New Jersey, told CIDRAP News. “Nobody said anything. He started feeding fine. It was good.”
But he failed a hearing test on his right side. Again, doctors and nurses attributed it to her delivery and fluid in his ear. Still, they urged the family have him undergo an auditory brainstem response test, which measures the auditory nerves.
“He kept failing,” Longo said. “The audiologist said, ‘You guys should really just go to CHOP [Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia].’”
At CHOP, her son failed numerous hearing tests, and genetic tests did not reveal an underlying cause for his hearing loss. Then an otolaryngologist asked the family a question that changed their lives.
“He was the first one to say, ‘Have you guys ever heard of CMV?’” Longo said. “Of course, we hadn’t.”
Usually asymptomatic in adults
CMV, or cytomegalovirus, is a common virus that’s often harmless in adults. “It usually causes absolutely no symptoms,” said Megan Pesch, MD, associate professor and director of the CMV Developmental Follow-up Clinic at the University of Michigan. “But if you are pregnant… it can transmit through the placenta and cause a lot of damage to that fetus.”
Babies with moms who had a CMV infection during pregnancy are born with congenital CMV (cCMV), which can cause complications such as miscarriage, stillbirth, hearing loss, vision problems, epilepsy, learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism. Most children born with CMV (roughly 75%) never develop complications, but for the other 25%, prompt diagnosis means they can undergo antiviral treatment that can slow their hearing loss.
Two papers published in the journal Pediatrics examine possible screening methods for CMV. One looks at Connecticut’s hearing-targeted screening program, and the commentary urges universal screening from a blood spot test. Treating more symptomatic babies with CMV could also have a huge impact on how these babies develop.
“Most cases of CMV in the absence of a screening program are not diagnosed,” said Pesch, coauthor of the commentary. “We need more babies to be identified.”
Hearing-targeted alone insufficient
In the paper, researchers at Yale University looked at the impact of a state mandate on diagnosing babies with cCMV. In 2016, Connecticut required doctors to test all babies who failed their hearing test for the virus.
Most cases of CMV in the absence of a screening program are not diagnosed.
Megan Pesch
Of the 197,177 babies born at a healthcare system, 49 had suspected or confirmed cCMV, and 32 of them (65%) had moderate to severe symptoms. Two of the 49 (4%) were mildly symptomatic, four (4%) has sensorineural hearing loss, nine (18%) had no symptoms, and two (4%) couldn’t be classified because of incomplete data.
The study found that the required targeted screening increased diagnosis of cCMV 4.3-fold. But the researchers also learned that some babies who passed their newborn screening test were later diagnosed with cCMV after developing symptoms.
“These data suggest that a hearing-targeted approach alone is insufficient and provides compelling rationale for Connecticut’s recent transition to universal screening in 2025,” the authors wrote.
Early diagnosis enables antiviral administration
In the commentary, Pesch and her coauthors discuss how blood-spot screening, also known as a heel stick test, could diagnose babies with cCMV at birth.
“If you just test the babies who fail their newborn hearing screen for CMV, you end up catching about 7% of all babies with CMV,” Pesch said. “A universal screening would catch more kids that would have CMV. It would also capture more kids who are never going to develop any symptoms, which is a sticking point for a lot of people.”
While some babies with cCMV are born with hearing loss, 20% to 25% develop it sometime in childhood, Pesch added. Doctors don’t have a good way to predict which babies will experience hearing loss, and by the time they’re diagnosed, it could be too late for interventions.
“Late-detected hearing loss can be a developmental emergency that sometimes you can’t recover from,” Pesch said.
With earlier diagnosis, more babies could take an antiviral medication, which needs to be administered within 21 days of birth.
“That really gets the viral load down, gets that inflammation down, and that has been shown to improve hearing outcomes,” Pesch explained. “We can arrest that hearing loss or… make that happen more slowly, which is a big deal for development of speech.”
The antiviral only helps with hearing and does not affect a baby’s potential diagnosis with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, vision problems, or learning disabilities.
Already in the United States, doctors screen babies for 38 conditions from the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel (RUSP) with a blood-spot test. Adding cCMV to the RUSP means that all babies throughout the country could be screened for it.
I want to educate people, get it out into the world about what CMV is.
Ann Nyberg
But in 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services disbanded the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (ACHDNC), which reviewed scientific data on screening and treatment protocols and recommended conditions to be added to RUSP.
Adding CMV to the RUSP today is “really tough,” Pesch said. Only two states, Minnesota and Connecticut, screen for cCMV. “When it’s done at a federal level, then we don’t have to go through this 50 times,” Pesch said.
Greater awareness needed
Ann Nyberg never heard of cCMV until her granddaughter, Bevin, was diagnosed with it.
“Most people, say probably 90% of the country, ‘What is that?’” Nyberg, 69, of Madison, Connecticut, said. “OB-GYNs don’t talk about it. There’s no vaccine for it. The only treatment is an antiviral.”
Pesch, who also has a daughter with cCMV, doesn’t recall her doctors mentioning it.
“All these moms are having babies with CMV; no one has ever heard of it,” she said. “It ends up being this feeling of betrayal or being really let down by the healthcare system. Like what do you mean this could’ve been prevented?”
It’s common for pregnant women to contract the virus from their older children. Greater awareness of it could mean that moms could try to protect themselves.
“The toddler sibling usually around 2 years old will catch CMV at daycare and bring it home without, of course, anybody knowing,” Pesch said. “It’s a silent virus.”
CMV spreads through saliva, and parents contract it when they kiss their toddler, eat food from their plate, or share drinking glasses, water bottles, utensils, or toothbrushes. Providing this information to expectant parents means they could avoid sharing these items with their toddlers, which many believe is as easy as abstaining from sushi or soft cheeses during pregnancy.
“It starts with awareness, knowing that it exists, and giving moms… an opportunity to try to prevent it,” Longo said. Her son was also diagnosed with mild right-sided hemiplegic cerebral palsy from cCMV.
“Had there been a conversation, would we have tested for it during pregnancy?” she said. “I don’t know. But we would have probably pushed to test immediately after he was born.”
Universal screening finds 70 cases in Connecticut in 1 year
Bevin, Nyberg’s granddaughter, was born deaf and had a lesion in her eye. When she failed her hearing test, Bevin automatically underwent screening for CMV, thanks to Connecticut’s 2016 law, and received a quick diagnosis. Taking the antiviral helped Bevin’s vision, but she still has hearing loss and developmental delays.
“Our Bevin, at nearly 4, does not feed herself. She does not walk yet. She does not talk. She has plaque in her brain,” Nyberg said. “We don’t know how she’s going to end up. But she’s the happiest toddler I’ve ever seen in my life.”
As a long time TV journalist, Nyberg wanted to help other families by advocating for statewide universal CMV screening.
“I got really busy,” she said. “I testified before the state House. I found everybody in the state of Connecticut, audiologists, other babies who were born with it, and we banded together, and we got it passed.”
The state’s universal screening began in July 2025, and since then Nyberg said 70 babies with cCMV have been detected through the screening panel. She’s working with her senators, Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Richard Blumethal (D-CT), to implement a national screening program.
“I want to make this a federal situation so that states don’t have to do this piecemeal,” Nyberg said. “We’ve got to do something. Not only for Bevin, because I can’t help her. But I want to educate people, get it out into the world about what CMV is.”
Universal screening could find more babies born with cytomegalovirus infection, researchers say
Meghan Holohan
Today at 2:02 p.m.
Misc Emerging Topics
After Michelle Longo gave birth to her third son, she noticed some unusual bruising on him. At the time, she didn’t know that the bruises were a sign that he had a little known condition.“They said, ‘Third baby, quick labor; it was probably just bruising from coming down the birth canal,” Longo, 35, from Swedesboro, New Jersey, told CIDRAP News. “Nobody said anything. He started feeding fine. It was good.”
But he failed a hearing test on his right side. Again, doctors and nurses attributed it to her delivery and fluid in his ear. Still, they urged the family have him undergo an auditory brainstem response test, which measures the auditory nerves.
“He kept failing,” Longo said. “The audiologist said, ‘You guys should really just go to CHOP [Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia].’”
At CHOP, her son failed numerous hearing tests, and genetic tests did not reveal an underlying cause for his hearing loss. Then an otolaryngologist asked the family a question that changed their lives.
“He was the first one to say, ‘Have you guys ever heard of CMV?’” Longo said. “Of course, we hadn’t.”
Usually asymptomatic in adults
CMV, or cytomegalovirus, is a common virus that’s often harmless in adults. “It usually causes absolutely no symptoms,” said Megan Pesch, MD, associate professor and director of the CMV Developmental Follow-up Clinic at the University of Michigan. “But if you are pregnant… it can transmit through the placenta and cause a lot of damage to that fetus.”
Babies with moms who had a CMV infection during pregnancy are born with congenital CMV (cCMV), which can cause complications such as miscarriage, stillbirth, hearing loss, vision problems, epilepsy, learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, and autism. Most children born with CMV (roughly 75%) never develop complications, but for the other 25%, prompt diagnosis means they can undergo antiviral treatment that can slow their hearing loss.
Two papers published in the journal Pediatrics examine possible screening methods for CMV. One looks at Connecticut’s hearing-targeted screening program, and the commentary urges universal screening from a blood spot test. Treating more symptomatic babies with CMV could also have a huge impact on how these babies develop.
“Most cases of CMV in the absence of a screening program are not diagnosed,” said Pesch, coauthor of the commentary. “We need more babies to be identified.”
Hearing-targeted alone insufficient
In the paper, researchers at Yale University looked at the impact of a state mandate on diagnosing babies with cCMV. In 2016, Connecticut required doctors to test all babies who failed their hearing test for the virus.
Most cases of CMV in the absence of a screening program are not diagnosed.
Megan Pesch
Of the 197,177 babies born at a healthcare system, 49 had suspected or confirmed cCMV, and 32 of them (65%) had moderate to severe symptoms. Two of the 49 (4%) were mildly symptomatic, four (4%) has sensorineural hearing loss, nine (18%) had no symptoms, and two (4%) couldn’t be classified because of incomplete data.
The study found that the required targeted screening increased diagnosis of cCMV 4.3-fold. But the researchers also learned that some babies who passed their newborn screening test were later diagnosed with cCMV after developing symptoms.
“These data suggest that a hearing-targeted approach alone is insufficient and provides compelling rationale for Connecticut’s recent transition to universal screening in 2025,” the authors wrote.
Early diagnosis enables antiviral administration
In the commentary, Pesch and her coauthors discuss how blood-spot screening, also known as a heel stick test, could diagnose babies with cCMV at birth.
“If you just test the babies who fail their newborn hearing screen for CMV, you end up catching about 7% of all babies with CMV,” Pesch said. “A universal screening would catch more kids that would have CMV. It would also capture more kids who are never going to develop any symptoms, which is a sticking point for a lot of people.”
While some babies with cCMV are born with hearing loss, 20% to 25% develop it sometime in childhood, Pesch added. Doctors don’t have a good way to predict which babies will experience hearing loss, and by the time they’re diagnosed, it could be too late for interventions.
“Late-detected hearing loss can be a developmental emergency that sometimes you can’t recover from,” Pesch said.
With earlier diagnosis, more babies could take an antiviral medication, which needs to be administered within 21 days of birth.
“That really gets the viral load down, gets that inflammation down, and that has been shown to improve hearing outcomes,” Pesch explained. “We can arrest that hearing loss or… make that happen more slowly, which is a big deal for development of speech.”
The antiviral only helps with hearing and does not affect a baby’s potential diagnosis with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, vision problems, or learning disabilities.
Already in the United States, doctors screen babies for 38 conditions from the Recommended Uniform Screening Panel (RUSP) with a blood-spot test. Adding cCMV to the RUSP means that all babies throughout the country could be screened for it.
I want to educate people, get it out into the world about what CMV is.
Ann Nyberg
But in 2025, the Department of Health and Human Services disbanded the Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children (ACHDNC), which reviewed scientific data on screening and treatment protocols and recommended conditions to be added to RUSP.
Adding CMV to the RUSP today is “really tough,” Pesch said. Only two states, Minnesota and Connecticut, screen for cCMV. “When it’s done at a federal level, then we don’t have to go through this 50 times,” Pesch said.
Greater awareness needed
Ann Nyberg never heard of cCMV until her granddaughter, Bevin, was diagnosed with it.
“Most people, say probably 90% of the country, ‘What is that?’” Nyberg, 69, of Madison, Connecticut, said. “OB-GYNs don’t talk about it. There’s no vaccine for it. The only treatment is an antiviral.”
Pesch, who also has a daughter with cCMV, doesn’t recall her doctors mentioning it.
“All these moms are having babies with CMV; no one has ever heard of it,” she said. “It ends up being this feeling of betrayal or being really let down by the healthcare system. Like what do you mean this could’ve been prevented?”
It’s common for pregnant women to contract the virus from their older children. Greater awareness of it could mean that moms could try to protect themselves.
“The toddler sibling usually around 2 years old will catch CMV at daycare and bring it home without, of course, anybody knowing,” Pesch said. “It’s a silent virus.”
CMV spreads through saliva, and parents contract it when they kiss their toddler, eat food from their plate, or share drinking glasses, water bottles, utensils, or toothbrushes. Providing this information to expectant parents means they could avoid sharing these items with their toddlers, which many believe is as easy as abstaining from sushi or soft cheeses during pregnancy.
“It starts with awareness, knowing that it exists, and giving moms… an opportunity to try to prevent it,” Longo said. Her son was also diagnosed with mild right-sided hemiplegic cerebral palsy from cCMV.
“Had there been a conversation, would we have tested for it during pregnancy?” she said. “I don’t know. But we would have probably pushed to test immediately after he was born.”
Universal screening finds 70 cases in Connecticut in 1 year
Bevin, Nyberg’s granddaughter, was born deaf and had a lesion in her eye. When she failed her hearing test, Bevin automatically underwent screening for CMV, thanks to Connecticut’s 2016 law, and received a quick diagnosis. Taking the antiviral helped Bevin’s vision, but she still has hearing loss and developmental delays.
“Our Bevin, at nearly 4, does not feed herself. She does not walk yet. She does not talk. She has plaque in her brain,” Nyberg said. “We don’t know how she’s going to end up. But she’s the happiest toddler I’ve ever seen in my life.”
As a long time TV journalist, Nyberg wanted to help other families by advocating for statewide universal CMV screening.
“I got really busy,” she said. “I testified before the state House. I found everybody in the state of Connecticut, audiologists, other babies who were born with it, and we banded together, and we got it passed.”
The state’s universal screening began in July 2025, and since then Nyberg said 70 babies with cCMV have been detected through the screening panel. She’s working with her senators, Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Richard Blumethal (D-CT), to implement a national screening program.
“I want to make this a federal situation so that states don’t have to do this piecemeal,” Nyberg said. “We’ve got to do something. Not only for Bevin, because I can’t help her. But I want to educate people, get it out into the world about what CMV is.”