Montreal researcher studies Cytomegalovirus in early childhood educators

By Jean-Benoit Legault, The Canadian Press

A virus that is particularly dangerous for vulnerable populations like newborns or immunocompromised people, but which is poorly understood by the public, is the subject of a new study by a Montreal researcher.

Cytomegalovirus, or CMV, is notably the most common cause of congenital infection and a significant cause of sensorineural hearing loss and intellectual disability in children worldwide.

Because children often carry the virus, the new study will focus specifically on early childhood educators who are at higher risk of catching CMV due to occupational exposure.

“If a woman catches this virus during her pregnancy, and especially if she catches it early in her pregnancy, in the first trimester, it can be associated with neurodevelopmental problems that can be severe and with deafness,” explained the study leader, Dr. Isabelle Boucoiran, who is an obstetrician-gynecologist and clinician-researcher at CHU Sainte-Justine.

“But it’s often diagnosed after pregnancy, and therefore when it’s too late for (prevention). The goal of my research program is to try to do things before women become pregnant or early in pregnancy to try to prevent this transmission and these effects in the baby.”

And since diagnosis usually occurs after pregnancy, she adds, CMV is often discovered when the baby is affected, even if the mother never had symptoms.

Children with CMV often have mild symptoms such as fever and may even be asymptomatic. It is estimated that about half of the general population has been exposed to CMV, sometimes without ever knowing it because of the mildness of the symptoms.

Children are therefore not necessarily removed from daycare due to illness, with the risk that this poses for educators who are pregnant or wish to become pregnant. Since children often secrete the virus in their saliva, educators may be exposed to it by handling toys or hugging children, for example.

About two-thirds of daycare workers are women of childbearing age, so awareness and prevention are extremely important, said Boucoiran.

“Daycare workers are taken off work as soon as we know they are pregnant,” she said. “But we still have to know they are pregnant. And there can be exposure (to CMV) before we find out.”

Preventive withdrawal does not apply to family educators either, the researcher recalled.

Boucoiran and her team wish to recruit ―·in the regions of Montreal, Quebec and Sherbrooke ― 533 early childhood educators aged 18 to 45 and a control group of 1,659 women who are not professionally exposed to young children. 

The researchers want to know how many educators are infected with CMV, but also to measure reinfection rates. “A particularity of this virus is that there are several strains and so you can catch it several times, but we have very little data on reinfections,” said Boucoiran.

The research project will also look at the protective measures that are put in place in daycare settings to see if some seem more effective than others, in order to identify “good practices” that could be deployed in all settings.

“Whether it is the first infection or a reinfection, both can lead to transmission to the baby during pregnancy,” warned Boucoiran in conclusion.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews

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