Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is endemic among adults in the U.S. territory of Guam (1,2). Perinatal HBV transmission, which occurs at birth from an infected mother to her newborn infant, is a major mode of HBV transmission and maintains HBV endemicity (3). Approximately 90% of HBV-infected infants will develop chronic HBV infection, and approximately 25% of those will die prematurely from ...

Syphilis is a systemic infectious disease caused by sexual or congenital transmission of the bacterium Treponema pallidum (T. pallidum). Syphilis causes a variety of symptoms corresponding to stages of infection (primary, secondary, tertiary) and no symptoms during latent stages. Late-stage syphilis includes gummatous, cardiovascular, and neurological complications that can lead to significant ...

remains to be clarifi ed. However, our previous hypothesis that prenatal or perinatal transient infection was an unlikely mode of virus acquisition needs to be modifi ed because PARV4 infection in newborns has recently been demonstrated (10). Although we lacked IgM and IgG serologic data to interpret our fi ndings, our study suggests that PARV4 genotype 3 infection might be characterized by vir...