What Is CMV?
Cytomegalovirus (also called CMV) is the most common congenital viral infection in the world. CMV is transmitted (passed on) from a mother to her unborn child.
Anywhere from 1 in 200 to 3 in 200 newborns are born with congenital CMV (congenital means “born with”). Congenital CMV is also called cCMV.
CMV, Disabilities, & Hearing Loss
CMV is a serious infection. Of newborns who are born with cCMV, up to one in five will have permanent disabilities. Hearing loss is the most common permanent disability for CMV.
What Are the Symptoms of CMV Infection?
Babies and infants can have different symptoms for CMV. Some babies will have no symptoms at all (called asymptomatic or aCMV). Other babies will have symptoms of CMV that affect one or more of their organs.
Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SNHL) & CMV
Some doctors count a type of hearing loss called sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL) as a symptom of CMV. Sensorineural hearing loss happens when the inner ear becomes damaged.
Other problems associated with CMV include the following:
- hepatitis
- low levels of platelets in the blood (thrombocytopenia)
- bleeding in the skin (petechiae)
- swelling in the liver & spleen (hepatosplenomegaly)
- intrauterine growth restriction
- central nervous system problems
- inflammation inside the eye’s retina (chorioretinitis)
You can learn more about CMV from the National CMV Foundation. You can also learn about the National Institute of Health's clinical trial on Valear, a clinical trial that studies CMV in babies.
Make an Appointment
To make an appointment with the CMV clinic, please call 801-662-1740. If you have a child with CMV or have any questions, you can reach Dr. Albert Park at the same number above.
Find a Pediatric Otolaryngologist Near You
A Relationship Created for the Best Pediatric Care
For pediatric specialty care, Intermountain Children's Health is affiliated with University of Utah Health. U of U Health physicians see patients at Primary Children's Hospital on campus, Lehi Primary Children's, and other locations throughout the Salt Lake City valley.
It's a shared mission of providing health care, education, and research. It comes to life through collaboration on clinical care, research, and educational programs.
Primary Children's Hospital operates as the main pediatric facility for the U of U Health system, providing care in more than 60 medical and surgical specialties such as surgery, oncology, cardiology, orthopedics, and others. Most of the providers at Primary Children's Hospital are faculty members at U of U Health.
This partnership delivers care to advance pediatric medicine while educating future generations of health care professionals.
Multidisciplinary, Expert Team
Our team has a special interest in CMV. We have been involved in the following:
- the only multi-disciplinary clinic dedicated to CMV treatment in the Mountain West
- first clinically validated tests using dry blood spot and saliva
- Utah becoming the first state to pass a law to increase CMV awareness and to introduce hearing targeted CMV screening
- first NIH-funded clinical trial to evaluate the efficacy and safety of using an antiviral drug, valganciclovir, for CMV-infected infants with isolated hearing loss
Our interdisciplinary team can provide the best treatment for your child because we have doctors and surgeons from a variety of medical fields and research teams, including the following:
- pediatric genetics
- infectious disease
- otolaryngology
- audiology
- neurology
- department of health (EDHI)
- ARUP laboratories
