Читать книгу Getting Pregnant For Dummies - Sharon Perkins - Страница 89

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) is caused by a virus — unlike chlamydia, which is caused by a bacterium. The difference is that bacteria do their damage outside of cells while viruses invade cells and do their damage by hijacking part of the DNA machinery. CMV is present in over half of the people by age 40 and one in three children are infected by age 5. Most people have no symptoms when they become infected, but CMV may cause mild symptoms of cough, fatigue, swollen glands, and sore throat. People infected with CMV are infected for life. CMV is spread through human fluids: direct contact through saliva or urine, sexual contact/semen, transplanted organs, blood transfusions, and breast milk (which, along with direct contact, is how many little ones contract the infection).

Most of the time, CMV is inactive (dormant), but it can activate at any time. When the infection activates, it can be spread to other people and babies. Healthy people rarely experience significant problems from CMV, although it can cause mononucleosis. Adults with a compromised immune system are more susceptible to infections that affect the eye, digestive system, and nervous system, and it can cause pneumonia. Infants can be born with congenital CMV, but this is more likely to happen if the mother contracts CMV for the first time when she is pregnant and not from reactivated CMV. Congenital CMV may cause the baby to have loss of vision, neurological problems, hearing loss, seizures, muscle problems and loss of coordination, and impaired intellect. The most common problem for infants with congenital CMV is hearing loss.

There is no cure for CMV, and healthy people generally do not need treatment. However, antiviral medications may be given to babies and people with weakened immune systems.

CMV does not appear to have an impact on fertility, but if it is an active infection, CMV can cause problems in a developing fetus leading to low birth weight, blindness, deafness, mental retardation, small head size, seizures, or damage to the liver or spleen. Testing “positive” for CMV means that you have been infected sometime in your lifetime, but there’s no way of knowing when. If your infection is not active, the risks in pregnancy are reduced.

If you are CMV negative and are considering using donor sperm, you may want to know if the donor is CMV negative. That way you will not have to worry about getting CMV yourself or it being a factor in any potential pregnancy.