Objective  To investigate the awareness of knowledge about cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection and its prevention among mothers of young children in Yi′nan county of Shandong province and to provide evidences for the prevention of congenital CMV infection among pregnant and childbearing women.

  Methods  Using stratified cluster random sampling, we conducted a self-administered questionnaire survey among 2 321 mothers of young children in 3 township and 5 village kindergartens during October 2018. Chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis were used to explore influencing factors of the awareness.

  Results  Among the 2 109 responders (90.87% of the mothers recruited) completing the survey, 50.73% were being aware of CMV, of them, 56.07% and 45.51% acquiring CMV-related knowledge from internet and medical professionals. The CMV-related knowledge item with the highest ratio of correct answer (61.40%) was “frequent hand washing reducing CMV transmission” and that with the lowest ratio (24.66%) was “congenital CMV infection inducing epilepsy in newborns”. The overall awareness rate of five key items of knowledge about the prevention of CMV infection was 59.12%. Logistic multivariate regression analysis demonstrated that the responders aged more than 35 years were likely to have a lower key knowledge about CMV infection (odds ratio OR = 0.54, P = 0.001) compared to those aged < 30 years; the responders not being informed on CMV-related knowledge by medical professional during antenatal examination were likely to have a lower key knowledge about CMV infection (OR = 0.76, P = 0.014) in comparison with those being informed.

  Conclusion  The awareness of knowledge about the prevention of cytomegalovirus infection is insufficient among mothers of young children, suggesting that health education on cytomegalovirus infection needs to be promoted among childbearing and pregnant women.