Antibodies to cytomegalovirus among personnel at a children's hospital.

Among 161 individual personnel at Children's Hospital, serum complement fixing antibodies were found more frequently (77%) in those who were in close contact with the patients than (39%) in those with less contact. This difference was most pronounced in the young age group. Most (80%) of the personnel at an age of 30 years or older, were seropositive, The results indicate that young personnel, working in close contact with infants and children in hospital, are at great risk of acquring cytomegalovirus infection. Student nurses, being exposed to these patients only for a few weeks, also were at risk of being infected. Seronegative pregnant women, working in a children's hospital, should therefore take measures to protect themselves from close contact with the patients since virus excretion occurs frequently, even without clinical signs of CMV-infection.