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Get a saliva test for your
infant
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A study involving an Indian-origin researcher
has suggested that a simple saliva swab can identify newborn babies with an
infection that is responsible for as much as 25 per cent of hearing loss in
4-year olds.
Although cytomegalovirus infection is a known cause of birth defects, including
permanent hearing loss, most CMV infections in infants are not identified early.
Suresh Boppana, and Karen Fowler from the University of Alabama at Birmingham
and colleagues from other academic medical centers report that a polymerase
chain-reaction (PCR)-based saliva test can identify CMV in newborns with greater
than 97 per cent accuracy.
"Our objective was to find what method could test for CMV in a larger sample,
rapidly, reliably and relatively inexpensively, we found that testing saliva
works well," says Boppana, a professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and the
paper's corresponding author.
There is currently no cure for CMV infection or even a clear connection between
CMV and hearing loss. But Boppana says babies should still be tested within the
first two to three weeks of birth. The sooner doctors know a baby is infected
with CMV, the better they can monitor and intervene if a child develops hearing
loss.
Those interventions include speech therapy, hearing aids, cochlear implants and
physical therapy.
The study will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine
( Courtesy: ANI ,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com
)
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