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Neutralizing antibody response to cytomegalovirus in seropositive pregnant women
A Tanaka1, H Moriuchi, K Hirota
1Virus Research Center, Sendai National Hospital, Japan.
The neutralizing (NT) antibody response to human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in seropositive pregnant women was evaluated to establish the role of protective humoral immunity in HCMV infections (reactivation) during pregnancy. Complement fixation (CF) antibody titers increased significantly in 54 (0.62%) of 8,663 seropositive cases tested during gestation. However, titers of NT antibody, when tested in the presence of complement (C'), increased as gestation progressed and exceeded 1:500 in most of the cases in whom the CF antibody titer had shown earlier an insignificant increase. When NT antibodies were tested in the absence of C', insignificant increase in titers were found. The results suggest that the presence of high titer of NT antibody may play an important role in protective humoral immunity against reactivation of HCMV in pregnant women, and may also be effective in preventing intrauterine infection and modulating the severity of perinatal infection in offspring borne of HCMV carrier mothers.
The neutralizing (NT) antibody response to human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in seropositive pregnant women was evaluated to establish the role of protective humoral immunity in HCMV infections (reactivation) during pregnancy. Complement fixation (CF) antibody titers increased significantly in 54 (0.62%) of 8,663 seropositive cases tested during gestation. However, titers of NT antibody, when tested in the presence of complement (C'), increased as gestation progressed and exceeded 1:500 in most of the cases in whom the CF antibody titer had shown earlier an insignificant increase. When NT antibodies were tested in the absence of C', insignificant increase in titers were found. The results suggest that the presence of high titer of NT antibody may play an important role in protective humoral immunity against reactivation of HCMV in pregnant women, and may also be effective in preventing intrauterine infection and modulating the severity of perinatal infection in offspring borne of HCMV carrier mothers.