Cytomegalovirus prior to this blog post has been mostly explained from a medical standpoint. What it is, how humans acquire it, why its dangerous. Now, these are all really good informative articles to establish at the forefront of this blog series. I mostly feel that way because I read about CMV and first off was freaking out because I had no clue it even existed and can potentially cause major harm to us people! However, we are mostly all alright because CMV only poses a major threat to those with compromised immune systems. I still felt it to be more important to discuss the repercussions from a medical standpoint at first. Now, I am going to dive more into CMV from a Microbiology standpoint.
Cytomegalovirus is the genus of Herpes Virus, something most of us know about. A really common member of this group is something known as a cold sore that many people have experienced at least once in their lives. The species of CMV is Human herpesvirus 5 (HHV-5). The subfamily of CMV is Betaherpesvirinae to which the family is just Herpesvirinae. The infection is spread through contact of glands or bodily fluids. This includes from mother to fetus while pregnant. Blood, saliva, urine, and sexual contact are all other ways to contract CMV infection. CMV is latent in mononuclear cells. This means in a nutshell that it stays in your mononuclear cells, which are normal cells such as lymphocytes or dendritic cells, and will just stay there dormant (inactive) without causing harm but can re-activate and cause symptoms later on. The infected cells will have an owls eye appearance, shown below.
CMV is the most common infection that is passed through pregnancy although 85-90% of cases, the infant does not experience symptoms. A pregnant woman can contract primary CMV and pass it on to child which is explained in a previous blog post. CMV affects between 50-85% of adults in the U.S. by age 40 and is present in all areas of the world, Other mammals even experience forms of CMV, such as Rhesus Monkey Cytomegalovirus. While CMV is everywhere, it is most common in underdeveloped countries with low socioeconomic status. This is most likely because they do not have access to great healthcare and prevention methods.
The goal of this blog post was to present some facts about Cytomegalovirus from a microbiological standpoint to see what happens to the cells and how we classify this virus. I also wanted to point out the populations and how much of the population CMV affects to show that it is more common than what we think and while healthy people may not show symptoms, it is still cause for concern and should be prevented.
Sources:
Unknown. (2017). Cytomegalovirus (CMV). RxPG. Website
MedBullets Team. (2017). Cytomegalovirus (CMV). MedBullets. Website
Microbiology orange group 