ABSTRACT
A 22 weeks pregnant women was affected by a life-threatening pneumonia and a paresis of the proximal muscles with cerebrospinal fluid pleocytosis. Her past medical history had been unremarkable except for recurrent episodes of paraumbilical herpes zoster. The clinical findings suggested a dissemination of varicella-zoster virus without skin lesions. Acyclovir was added to the therapy, and the clinical picture began to improve. Varicella-zoster virus DNA was detected in placental tissue by DNA-hybridisation analysis.
Subject(s)
Herpes Zoster/diagnosis , Herpesvirus 3, Human/isolation & purification , Placenta/microbiology , Pneumonia, Viral/diagnosis , Pregnancy Complications, Infectious/diagnosis , Acyclovir/therapeutic use , Adult , DNA, Viral/analysis , Female , Herpes Zoster/cerebrospinal fluid , Herpes Zoster/drug therapy , Herpes Zoster/etiology , Herpesvirus 3, Human/genetics , Humans , Nucleic Acid Hybridization , Pneumonia, Viral/cerebrospinal fluid , Pneumonia, Viral/drug therapy , Pneumonia, Viral/etiology , Pregnancy , Pregnancy Complications, Infectious/drug therapy , Pregnancy Complications, Infectious/etiology , Pregnancy Trimester, Second , Time Factors , UmbilicusABSTRACT
In our Centre for Prenatal Diagnosis, we undertook a punctuation of the umbilical cord on a pregnant woman infected with varicella, complicated by viral encephalitis, to diagnose a foetal viraemia. In cooperation with the Toma Laboratory and Clonit Ltd., who have long been working on the development of specific viral genome probes, we succeeded in proving, that the foetus had contracted varicella.
