Intestinal manifestations of postnatal and congenital cytomegalovirus infection in term and preterm infants

To review the relevant literature on cytomegalovirus-(CMV-)related intestinal problems in neonates, supplemented by two own cases of volvulus, a PubMed search and separate additional searches with characterizing terms were performed. 46 hits were found, 15 of which had to be excluded because they did not report clinical cases, yielding a total of 47 infants. Symptoms in both preterm and term infants with proven postnatal infection (n = 16) included abdominal distension, bloody diarrhoea, necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) with perforation and intestinal stricture, with lethal outcome in 3 patients. Manifestations in congenital or unclearly allocated CMV-infections, including volvulus, were similar. We report on 2 additional cases with volvulus in extremely low gestational age neonates (ELGANs) with proven postnatal CMV-infection and concurrent detection of CMV positive cells within the resected intestinal stroma. As a conclusion volvulus should be added to other known intestinal manifestations of breastmilk (BM) related postnatal CMV disease in extremely preterm infants.