Seroepidemiology Study of Cytomegalovirus and Rubella among Pregnant Women at St. Paul’s Hospital Millennium Medical College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Maternal cytomegalovirus (CMV) and rubella infections have adverse neonataloutcomes. Both CMV and rubella are more widespread in developing countries and in communities withlower socioeconomic status. The aim of this study was to investigate sero-prevalence of CMV and rubellainfection and associated possible risk factors.METHOD: Using cross sectional study design a total of 200 pregnant women were consecutivelyrecruited starting from June and July 2014. Blood samples were collected, and structured questions wereused to gather socio-demographic and risk factor related data. ELISA was used to detect CMV (IgG,IgM) and rubella IgM. SPSS version 20 was used to analyze the data, and regression was also performed.RESULTS: Out of 200 pregnant women, 88.5%, 30(15.5%) and 4(2.0%) were CMV-IgG, CMV- IgM,and rubella-IgM positive, respectively. Women who were immune/positive only for IgG were 73.5%. Thesecond group was those with primary infection [IgG (+) plus IgM (+)] and this consisted of 15.0%participants. Eleven percent of the participants were at high risk for primary infection during theirpregnancy. One pregnant woman was identified as having a recent primary infection. In this study, nostatistically significant association was detected between CMV infection with idependent factors (p-value>0.05).CONCLUSION: In addition to detection of high prevalence of CMV, detecting recent infection of rubellaworsens the outcome of the disease. Rubella vaccine should be taken into consideration after large scalesurveillance. However, screening of all pregnant women for CMV infection may not be cost-effective asin the countries with high seropositivity.