Ten years of prevalence and clinical laboratory features of HCMV infected children in a hospital of Jiangsu Province

Abstract

Background: Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is prevalent worldwide and causing lifelong infection. We conducted a retrospective study to determine the epidemiology and clinical laboratory characteristics of CMV infection in children in a hospital of Jiangsu Province. Methods: Totally 2600 urine specimens of infants and children hospitalized in general pediatric from 2009 to 2018 were collected followed by CMV-DNA loads detection. Among them, clinical records and laboratory results of 971 infants aged 3-12 months were focused for further statistics analysis. Results: Urine CMV-DNA load test was intensively ordered in 2011 (17.76%; 532/2996) for infants under 1 month but the rate continuously dropped ever since. In fact, infants under 1 month had the lowest detection sensitivity and children aged between 3 to 24 months had the highest positive rate. On the contrary, analysis of blood routine test showed that the absolute counts of peripheral leukocytes (P=0.008), monocytes (P=0.039), neutrophils (P<0.001) and platelets (P=0.006) were significantly decreased in CMV+ group compared with CMV- group. The percentages of neutrophils (NEUT%) were decreased (P<0.001) while the percentages of lymphocytes (LYM%) were increased (P<0.001) by CMV infection. Moreover, NLR (neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio) (P<0.01), MLR (monocyte to lymphocyte ratio) (P=0.017) and SII (systemic immune index) (P=0.002) were also decreased in CMV+ group. The hospitalization of cases in CMV+ group was significantly longer than that of the CMV- group (P=0.039), and the proportion of children with hospitalization stay longer than 2 weeks in CMV+ group was higher, with significant difference (P=0.006). Conclusion: CMV survey has not drawn much attention in hospitalized infants and children, and the combined application of urine CMV detection and blood routine test should be benefit when assessing CMV infections.