CMV negative vs postive?

zahava1980

I am curious if anyone has had the same problem I did. When searching for a donor I realized there are more CMV positive then negative donors at most cryobanks. Since I am CMV negative my doctor told me I must have a negative donor to prevent birth defects.

Apparently CMV is sexually transmitted -(CMV is a common virus that infects most people at some time during their lives but rarely causes obvious illness. It is a member of the herpes virus family. Other members of the herpes virus family cause chickenpox, infectious mononucleosis, fever blisters (herpes I) and genital herpes (herpes II). Like other herpes viruses, CMV infection can become dormant for a while and may reactivate at a later time. The virus is carried by people and is not associated with food, water or animals.)

Anyone else have this issue finding a donor CMV negative?

farmgirl34

Hi,
My husband and I started looking for donors after his MICRO TESE came back no sperm found. We found several donors that we really liked, but were CMV positive so to be safe I was teseted for CMV and it came back negative. I was glad I was negative, but we had to let go of the donor that was a perfect match with lifetime photos and had to look again.

It was REALLY hard to find any CMV negative donors that had what were were looking for. Afrer hours of searching and deciding if I was ok with not being able to see lifetime photos we have decided on a donor!

Best wishes to you!!!

NYCMom

When we were looking for our donor a few years ago I didn't come across any donors that were positive, I'm surprised you are finding so many. My Dr told me she didn't think they allowed positive men to donate even. I just searched and do see there are some positive donors listed, I guess just none that matched our search criteria when we were looking. Good luck finding the right match (our donor is sold out/retired/inactive/whatever they call it, lol).

madmud

CMV is actually increadably common in the population. causes a mono like illness. it can be devistating if you catch it during a pregnancy. I was supprised to find out I was still CMV negative! I tested negative in college and the blood bank used to hit me up constantly to donate for the neonates (they have to have CMV neg blood the only reason I know all of this stuff BTW)! Most people catch it have the 'mono ' like issue and never know it came and went untill they are tested. Hope this helps. I'm now in the same boat of looking for a CMV neg donor too so, here's to going with gut feelings!

natzg

So as common as CMV is - 50% to 85% in the USA and up to 100% in developing countries - I somehow managed to not contract it. And that's with growing up in South Africa. So here I am with a negative status and battling to find someone suitable with a corresponding negative status. I've opened my search to other sperms banks. Who would have thought I'd be so grumpy about not having contracted a disease!

Singingirl96

I'm cmv negative and my donor is positive. All donors that fit my requirements were positive so I didn't have much of a choice. I spoke to my doctor about it and he said that up until last year they didn't even check for it. The chances of contracting it are so unbelievably minor that it really isn't something to worry about. Plus, think about it. What if my dh was cmv positive? I'm not concerned.

maria2

I'm also CMV negative...and asked my doctor about this...My doctor said its fine that donor is CMV IgG Antibody "positive." If donor was CMV IgM Antibody "positive" then the sperm bank wouldn't him. Most people are CMV positive. Don't worry.

clarapippa

I also asked my doctor about CMV, and Rh Factor, and he said quite honestly it doesn't matter in the vast majority of situations. Don't worry about it unless your doctor says something specifically to you!

tillie

I'm still struggling with this, being negative myself. If the donor is infectious, then they trash the sperm. So there are no active donors who are infectious, as far as the sperm bank knows, and this is one reason they do the quarantine. If they are positive, it is because they were once infected and it is no longer active but somehow still in the system. If you husband was positive and you were negative, the risk would be low because in most situations you would be having you know what with him and contract it well prior to pregnancy, if he was infectious. My first donor was negative, but now that I'm out of him, I am so tempted to pick a positive donor (way more good choices). But if something happened, I would never forgive myself. Any new thoughts on this? Are these positive donors with old infections actually able to infect people??

Liz

Hi all, I am also CMV negative and am using a known sperm donor who is CMV positive (IgG+, IgM-) -- which indicates he has been infected at some point in his life but not recently.

My doctor also said DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT, similar to maria2 and clarapippa -- it's very, very rare to contract it during pregnancy.

Anyway, I was interested in a second opinion (from my doctor's) and so I hopped on here and here it is!