Noninvasive Prenatal Screening Can Identify Cytomegalovirus Risk

TUESDAY, Jan. 13, 2026 (HealthDay News) — Quantification of cytomegalovirus (CMV) DNA during noninvasive prenatal screening (NIPS) is accurate and sensitive for CMV viral load, and stratifies risk for primary maternal infection and for congenital CMV (cCMV), according to a study published in the January issue of Clinical Chemistry.

Pauline H. Herroelen, from AZ Delta Medical Laboratories in Roeselare, Belgium, and colleagues analyzed NIPS data from 22,333 unselected pregnancies at 12 weeks of gestation to examine the utility of quantifying cell-free CMV DNA for identifying pregnancies at risk for primary CMV infection and cCMV. CMV-aligned reads were quantified from low-pass whole-genome sequencing data and were validated against quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR), maternal serology, and systematic newborn screening.

The researchers found good correlation between CMV read counts and qPCR-measured viral loads. The presence of one or more CMV read count, seen in 2.1 percent of pregnancies, was highly predictive of cCMV (likelihood ratio, 21.1). Good diagnostic accuracy for primary infection and for cCMV was seen for CMV read counts (area under the receiver operating characteristic curves, 0.77 and 0.82, respectively). A subgroup with significantly elevated risk for primary infection and cCMV was identified with a threshold of four or more read counts (likelihood ratios, 7.8 and 6.0), achieving a positive predictive value of 51.7 percent for cCMV.

“Given its low cost and high throughput, its integration into routine aneuploidy screening is a powerful complement to serology, poised to improve the identification of pregnancies that may benefit from antiviral therapy to prevent cCMV,” the authors write.

Abstract/Full Text