Congenital Varicella Encephalomyelitis in Surviving Newborn

Chickenpox, Measles, and Mumps

“…Bulbar palsy is suspected to result in dysphagia and bouts of aspiration pneumonia in some of these children. * Deep tendon reflexes were reported as normal in one infant [225] and diminished to absent in six, { and they were in some cases accompanied by sensory deficits [74,217,222,226,253]. Electromyography in some patients revealed a denervation pattern with loss of motor units [217,226,227,249,253].…”

“…Patients with cerebral cortical atrophy, diffuse brain involvement, or mental retardation (frequently accompanied by abnormal electroencephalograms and seizures or myoclonic jerks) have been described [216,217,[224][225][226]259]. In a few patients, cerebrospinal fluid findings were normal [74,217,226,253]; in others, there were increased numbers of leukocytes or protein levels [216,223,225].…”

“…The most common limb abnormality, which first called attention to this congenital syndrome, is hypoplasia of a limb, most commonly unilateral involvement of a leg or arm (see Table 22-6). Hypoplasia or absence of digits has also been observed [216,218,221,222,[225][226][227]. Talipes equinovarus or a calcaneovalgus deformity has also occurred.…”

“…It is also predicted that with widespread use of varicella vaccine, the incidence of this unusual cause of congenital disease will become rare. *References [203,204,210,214,216,225,233,247,249,253,278].…”

Varicella-Zoster Virus Infections During Pregnancy: Epidemiology, Clinical Symptoms, Diagnosis, Prevention and Therapy

“…A follow-up report in the literature demonstrates that in spite of initially poor prognosis a good long-term outcome can be observed in patients with CVS [129]. 1961 -1970 1 [40] 1971 -1980 18 [41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56] 1981 -1990 32 [23, 1991 -2000 63 [25,27,31, 2001 -2004 13 [28,[116][117][118][119][120][121][122][123][124][125][126] Concerning a relationship between maternal zoster and CVS, there are some reports of infants with congenital malformations being born to mothers with a history of zoster during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy [130,131]. But, in none of these cases was the diagnosis of shingles proven by laboratory investigation, and no case showed laboratory evidence of intrauterine infection with VZV.…”