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Ex vivo Culture of Human Placental Explants for the Study of Viral Transmission Across the Maternal-Fetal Interface
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Materno-fetal transmission of human coronaviruses: a prospective pilot study

A Gagneur1, E Dirson, S Audebert

  • 1Department of Pediatrics, CHU Morvan, 2 avenue Foch, Brest cedex, France. arnaud.gagneur@chu-brest.fr

European Journal of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases : Official Publication of the European Society of Clinical Microbiology
|April 1, 2008
PubMed

This prospective pilot study investigates the possibility of materno-fetal transmission of human coronaviruses (HCoV) responsible for cases of neonatal infection. This vertical transmission was studied with 159 samples from mother-child couples: maternal vaginal (MV) and respiratory (MR) samples during labor; and newborn gastric sample (NG) with detection of HCoV (229E, OC-43, NL-63, HKU1) via real time RT PCR. HCoV was detected in 12 samples (229E: 11; HKU1: 1) from seven mother-child couples. For three couples, only MR tested positive (cases 1-3). For two other couples all three samples (MV, MR and NG) tested positive (cases 4 and 5). For case 6, only MV and NG tested positive. In case 7, only MV was positive. Possible vertical transmission of HCoV was hypothesized in this pilot study and requires further investigation on a larger scale.

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