#0103 Prevalence and molecular epidemiology of CMV and EBV among nurses working in pediatrics, transplantology, and primary health care
Nurses May Not Be at Elevated Risk of Contracting the Cytomegalovirus or Epstein-Barr Virus
Working in healthcare can often lead to exposure to harmful biological factors that may compromise a healthcare worker’s own health. These harmful biological factors can, of course, include viruses, such as the cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). Both viruses are quite common in human populations, and they generally do not cause illness in persons with healthy immune systems. However, their potential for causing serious illness if the immune system becomes weakened makes CMV and EBV transmission a legitimate workplace health and safety concern.
Nurses often have to work in close contact with patients and handle their patients’ bodily fluids, so we wanted to know whether nurses are at elevated risk of exposure to CMV and EBV. We therefore recruited 90 professionally active nurses who worked at a family medicine outpatient clinic in Warsaw, Poland. This participant sample included nurses working in primary healthcare, who we believed would be at relatively low risk of contracting CMV or EBV, and nurses who worked in pediatrics and transplantology, who we believed would be at relatively high risk of virus contraction. For a control group, we recruited 30 women who did not work in healthcare or in a role requiring direct contact with children.
All participants provided blood samples, and laboratory personnel measured the serum levels of antibodies against CMV and EBV, including different types of antibodies known as immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies and immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies. The laboratory personnel also measured the plasma levels of CMV and EBV DNA.
When we analyzed our data, we found that the nurses and control participants were similar in terms of the prevalence of IgG antibodies against CMV and EBV and that none of the nurses had IgM antibodies against either virus. However, the laboratory tests revealed that CMV and EBV DNA was present in some of the nurses but not in any of the control participants. A detailed description of these results appears in an article recently published in the Journal of Occupational Health.
Overall, these findings do not provide convincing evidence for nurses being at greater-than-normal risk of contracting either CMV or EBV, but further research is necessary.
Link to the original journal article:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/1348-9585.12112
Title of the paper:
Prevalence and molecular epidemiology of CMV and EBV among nurses working in pediatrics, transplantology, and primary health care
Authors:
Patrycja W. Zając, Bożena Czarkowska-Pączek, and Aleksandra Wyczałkowska-Tomasik
