Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is the most frequent cause of congenital infection, leading to long-term sequelae especially sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL). Since 5-15 % of the asymptomatic newborns will develop late sequelae, the implementation of a universal screening would allow the identification of infected children and early intervention. The aim of this study was to validate the use of saliva pools of 10 and 20 samples for the detection of HCMV congenital infection. Four spiking samples (negative saliva matrix added with known concentration of AD169 strain culture supernatant) and a set of 12 saliva samples, collected from newborns with confirmed congenital infection in their first three weeks of life, were tested individually and after dilution in 10 and 20 pools by an "in-house" RT-PCR. Both pool methodologies, 10-pool and 20-pool samples, had 100 % sensitivity and specificity when compared with individual samples. This methodology could allow a cost reduction close to 85 % and 89 %, respectively for the 10-pool and 20-pool approach, when compared with testing each sample individually. This significant reduction may open the possibility to perform the newborn screening for HCMV in a large-scale.

中文翻译：

---

评价唾液池方法以检测先天性人类巨细胞病毒感染。

人巨细胞病毒（HCMV）是先天性感染的最常见原因，导致长期后遗症，尤其是感觉神经性听力丧失（SNHL）。由于5-15％的无症状新生儿将发展为晚期后遗症，因此实施全面筛查将有助于识别受感染的儿童并进行早期干预。这项研究的目的是验证使用10和20个样本的唾液库来检测HCMV先天性感染。从出生前三周确认患有先天性感染的新生儿中分别采集四个稀释样品（添加了已知浓度的AD169菌株培养上清液的阴性唾液基质）和一组12个唾液样品，分别进行了测试，并分别稀释了10和20通过“内部” RT-PCR进行合并。这两种方法 10个样品池和20个样品池的样品与单个样品相比具有100％的敏感性和特异性。与分别测试每个样本相比，此方法可以使10池和20池方法的成本分别降低近85％和89％。这种显着减少可能为大规模筛查HCMV的新生儿打开可能性。