Shedding Light on a Mystery
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is preparing to launch a large scale trial using antibodies as a way of testing and preventing birth defects, including blindness and deafness. These birth defects are caused by mothers passing a common virus to their unborn child. An Australian blood plasma group, CSL, announced today that it will donate $2.5million worth of cytomegalovirus (CMV) antibodies from human plasma to the NIH for a trial expected to be begin here in the US by 2012.
As of now there is no vaccine to prevent CMV from occurring; the most commonly reported infection that is responsible for various birth defects including Down syndrome. According to Bill Rawlinson, a senior medical virologist at the University of South Wales, more babies afflicted with Down syndrome are born with CMV, and coming in at a close second--cerebral palsy. Most women experience it for the first time during their pregnancy and roughly one-third of them pass it along to their unborn child. The clinical trial will be getting underway this month, beginning by screening approximately 150,000 pregnant women over the next four years.