Cytomegalovirus infection (CMV)
Would you like to know what lab results mean? DDxHub - Differential Diagnosis Hub helps to understand and explains your blood test.
Cytomegalovirus infection (CMV) |
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Would you like to know what lab results mean? DDxHub - Differential Diagnosis Hub helps to understand and explains your blood test. |
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You have symptoms and blood work results. How do they correlate? What is the health condition? Some disorders have similar signs and laboratory values. DDxHub helps to define a right diagnosis. Run DDxHub now and enter symptoms and test results. |
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All information on this page is intended for your general knowledge only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See Additional Information |
Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is a virus found around the world. It is related to the viruses that cause chickenpox and infectious mononucleosis (mono). From 50% to 80% of adults in the US have had a CMV infection by age 40. Once CMV is in a person's body, it stays there for life. Most people with CMV don't get sick. But infection with the virus can be very serious in babies and people with weak immune systems. If a woman gets CMV when she is pregnant, she can pass it on to her baby. CMV does not harm most babies. But some develop lifelong disabilities. CMV is spread through close contact with body fluids. You should use good hygiene, including proper hand washing, to avoid catching or spreading the virus. Most people with CMV don't require treatment. If you have a weakened immune system, your doctor may prescribe antiviral medicine. In immunocompromised individuals (patients with AIDS and transplant recipients), disease manifests with fever, bone marrow suppression, and tissue-invasive disease such as pneumonia, hepatitis, colitis, nephritis, and retinitis. In an immunologically-naive fetus, CMV infection may lead to cytomegalic inclusion disease, characterized by severe neurologic abnormalities, mental retardation, and hearing defects. In patients with compromised immune function, the treatment of choice is intravenous ganciclovir or oral valganciclovir. Intraocular administration of ganciclovir, and less commonly fomivirsen, is also used in CMV retinitis. Intravenous foscarnet and cidofovir are less preferred agents.
