Incidence of rubella, herpes simplex, and cytomegalovirus antibodies in mentally retarded children

ABSTRACT

This work was done on 48 children with unclassifiable mental retardation, in addition to 48 normal healthy children as a control. All cases were in vestigated for the presence of rubella, herpevirus and cytomegalovirus lgG antibodies using ELISA technique. lgG antibody levels for test and control groups respectively were 2.14 +/- 1.62 and 2.62 +/- 1.75 for rubella, 1.140 +/- 628 and 1.472 +/- 0.381 for herpes virus and 0.401 +/- 0.208 and 0.368 +/- 0.164 for CMV denoting that there is no significant difference in antibody levels between test and control groups. Similarly, it was found that there is no significant difference in the level of these antibodies between cases with microcephaly and normocephaly, cases with and without deafness and cases with and without ophthalmic defects in test group cases. Accordingly, we can say that there is no clinical association between any of these viruses [evaluated by lgG antibody levels] at one hand and mental retardation or its manifestation, represented by microcephaly, deafness and ophthalmic defects, on the other hand