Washington, June 2 : A study involving an Indian-origin researcher has suggested that a simple saliva swab can identify newborn babies with an infection that is responsible for as much as 25 percent of hearing loss in 4-year olds.

Although cytomegalovirus infection is a known cause of birth defects, including permanent hearing loss, most CMV infections in infants are not identified early.

Suresh Boppana, and Karen Fowler from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and colleagues from other academic medical centers report that a polymerase chain-reaction (PCR)-based saliva test can identify CMV in newborns with greater than 97 percent accuracy.

"Our objective was to find what method could test for CMV in a larger sample, rapidly, reliably and relatively inexpensively, we found that testing saliva works well," says Boppana, a professor of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and the paper''s corresponding author.

There is currently no cure for CMV infection or even a clear connection between CMV and hearing loss. But Boppana says babies should still be tested within the first two to three weeks of birth. The sooner doctors know a baby is infected with CMV, the better they can monitor and intervene if a child develops hearing loss.

Those interventions include speech therapy, hearing aids, cochlear implants and physical therapy.

The study will be published in the New England Journal of Medicine. (ANI)