[Cytomegalovirus infection from mothers to their infants].

HCMV infection among mothers and their infants was studied prospectively with methods of high specificity and sensitivity, such as detection of HCMV specific IgM antibody captured by anti-mu chain antibody, rapid detection of HCMV early antigens from tissue cultures, etc. The data indicated that 94.6% of the pregnant women had been infected before their pregnancy. The rate of primary infection during pregnancy was only 0.13% according to the seroconversion of HCMV-IgG, suggesting that most of the active infection in pregnant women are due to reactivation of the virus. The congenital infection rate was 6.2%. Most of the women infected were asymptomatic and closely related to the maternal HCMV-IgM. It seems that most of the congenital infections are the result of recurrent infection of their mothers and maternal antibodies do protect the fetus. The presence of HCMV in mother's genital tracts was associated with perinatal infection but not congenital infections.