Professor Michael Weekes, infectious disease expert at Addenbrooke’s Hospital and the University of Cambridge, is co-organising an international online conference about human cytomegalovirus (CMV).
CMV is related to the herpes virus that causes cold sores and chicken pox. Once in the body it is there for life, but most people don’t know they have the virus as the immune system controls it.
However, for immunocompromised patients such as transplant recipients, the disease can be devastating, suffering organ rejection, multi-organ failure and even death.
Around one in 100 pregnancies are affected, because the mother was already infected, or became infected during pregnancy, and it is the leading infectious cause of deafness and intellectual disability in children.
There is no vaccine, and only a limited range of treatments – all of which suffer from problems with drug resistance and toxicity.
The conference will be open to the public on Zoom for two hours from 3pm on Mother’s Day, 27 March, and free registration is available at https://www.cmv2022.org/public-session/
It will include talks from parents about the impacts of CMV on their children, how to prevent transmission during pregnancy, and international experts talking about testing for CMV during pregnancy, treatments and vaccines. A panel discussion, with questions from the public, will follow.
Speakers will include Sharon Wood and Sarah Dewar from CMV Action UK, Professor Paul Griffiths from University College London, Professor Asma Khalil of St George’s Hospital, University of London, Sheila Dollard from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Dr Soren Gantt from the Université de Montréal, Canada, and Professor Paul Moss from the University of Birmingham.
Professor Weekes said: “In many ways CMV is the opposite of SARS-CoV-2 – it’s been with us for millennia, and is a highly successful virus, managing to infect most of us for our whole lives. People need to know about CMV during pregnancy and how to prevent infection, but almost everyone doesn’t.”
Prof Weekes was awarded his BEM in January 2021. Read more about his work setting up Covid testing facilities here.