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To determine if cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection is a risk factor for primary coronary artery disease (CAD), the association between CMV infection and CAD (> 50% blockage in any coronary artery) was investigated in nearly 900 successive nontransplant patients undergoing coronary angiography. By use of logistic regression, older age (P < .001), white race (P < .001), gender (P < .001), hypercholesterolemia (P = .04), and other established cardiovascular risk factors (P = .003) were identified as significantly associated with CAD, but CMV seropositivity (P = .462), the level of IgG antibodies to CMV whole cell antigen (P = .98), or the levels of IgGantibodies to CMV glycoprotein B (P = .67) were not. These data suggest that CMV infection is not a major risk factor for the development of primary CAD in adults. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Because human parvovirus B19 (B19) infections are common in children, and maternal infection of pregnant women may cause fetal death, risk factors for B19 infections for hospital and school employees were identified during an endemic period. By serologic testing, 2730 employees of 135 schools in three school systems and 751 employees of a hospital were monitored. Of these, 60% were initially seropositive. After adjusting for age, race, and gender, risk factors for seropositivity were contact with children 5-18 years old at home (odds ratio [OR] = 1.2), at work (OR = 1.2), and employment in elementary schools in school system 2 (OR = 1.4). Over 42 months, 1 of 198 susceptible hospital employees seroconverted versus 62 of 927 school employees. Four factors associated with seroconversion were employment at elementary schools in system 2, contact with children 5-11 years old at home or with children 5-18 years old at work, and age < 30 years. Those in daily contact with school-age children had a fivefold increased annual occupational risk for B19 infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To develop a vaccine against cytomegalovirus (CMV), a canarypox virus (ALVAC) expressing CMV glycoprotein (gB) was evaluated alone or in combination with a live, attenuated CMV vaccine (Towne). Three doses of 106.5 TCID50 of ALVAC-CMV(gB) induced very low neutralizing or ELISA antibodies in most seronegative adults. However, to determine whether ALVAC-CMV(gB) could prime for antibody responses, 20 seronegative adults randomly received either 106.8 TCID50 of ALVAC-CMV(gB) or 106.8 TCID50 of ALVAC-RG, expressing the rabies glycoprotein, administered at 0 and 1 month, with all subjects receiving a dose of 103.5 pfu of the Towne vaccine at 90 days. For subjects primed with ALVAC-CMV(gB), neutralizing titers and ELISA antibodies to CMV(gB) developed sooner, were much higher, and persisted longer than for subjects primed with ALVAC-RG. All vaccines were well tolerated. These results demonstrate that ALVAC-CMV(gB) primes the immune system and suggest a combined-vaccine strategy to induce potentially protective levels of neutralizing antibodies.