Maternal intrauterine herpes simplex virus infection leading to persistent fetal vasculature.

Herpes simplex virus can cause serious ocular and systemic disease in the neonate. The mode of transmission to the neonate is usually from the maternal birth canal to the fetus intrapartum; but much more rarely, hematogenous transplacental infection can affect the developing fetus months prior to birth. Persistent fetal vasculature occurs when there is persistence of the fetal ocular vasculature, which normally regresses prior to birth. To our knowledge, we report the first case of serologically proven intrauterine herpes simplex virus infection associated with bilateral persistent fetal vasculature in a surviving term infant. Arch Ophthalmol. 2000;118:837-840