Department of Virology, Royal Free and University College Medical School, Royal Free Campus, Rowland Street, London NW3 2PF, UK
Sir,
Dr Crowleys letter1 illustrates the problems that congenital cytomegalovirus can cause. I agree that treatment should be used where this is supported by evidence-based medicine.
I have recommended the treatment of neonates born with CNS signs since Kimberlin et al.2 presented the abstract of their phase III study. This treatment recommendation and further details can be found on the website of the Clinical Virology Network (clinical-virology.org).
Footnotes
* Tel: +44-207-830-2997; Fax: +44-207-830-2854; E-mail: p.griffiths{at}rfc.ucl.ac.uk
References
1
.
Crowley, B. (2002). Ganciclovir treatment of symptomatic congenital cytomegalovirus infection. Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy 50, 435436.
2 . Kimberlin, D. W., Lin, C. Y., Sanchez, P., Demmler, G., Dankner, W., Shelton, M. et al. (2000). Ganciclovir (GCV) treatment of symptomatic congenital cytomegalovirus (CMV) infections: results of a phase III randomized trial. In Program and Abstracts of the Fortieth Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, Toronto, Canada, 2000. Abstract 1942, p. 274. American Society for Microbiology, Washington, DC, USA.