Role of Congenital Cytomegalovirus Infection and Protein 53 in Neural tube Defect

Background: Neural tube defects (NTDs) are the greatest shared severely disabling birth defects, they resulted from compound and many etiologies in which both hereditary, life style and ecological factors appear to be convoluted. Objective: To study the role congenital cytomegalovirus and the biomarker Protein 53 (p 53) in pathogenesis of neural tube defects. Patients and Methods: This is a cross sectional comparative study done on 47 mothers of different age group and their babies who have NTD and 47 mothers with their healthy babies at AL-Batool Teaching Hospital/ Diyala/ Iraq from Sept 2017 to May 2018. Rapid serological test to detect anti- CMV IgG and IgM Abs for all case and control groups and their mothers, together with ELISA test to detect P53. The statistical analysis of data was achieved by using SPSS V.20. Results: There was high rate of anti- CMV IgG Abs in NTD cases and their mothers ( n= 10,21.3%, p value= 0.08), out of them, one case had positive anti-IgM Abs together with his mother, whereas in control group, anti CMV IgG was positive in 4(8.5%)in both mothers and their healthy babies with no anti IgM detected. P53 titer is higher to a significant level ( p