SUMMARY Among 40 hospitalized infants and children with cytomegalovirus infection, 14 (35 %) had interstitial pneumonitis, 4 (10%) had wheezing or tachypnoea but without x-ray evidence of classical interstitial pneumonia, the remaining 22 (55 %) were free of pulmonary involvement. Most patients had tachypnoea and nonproductive cough of varying durations: those with underlying pulmonary pathology tended to have persistent and prolonged respiratory symptoms. Mortality and severity of the lung disease were related to the underlying immunodeficiency or concomitant pulmonary process.Clinical presentations of cytomegalovirus (CMV) infection encompass a broad spectrum of symptoms and signs ranging from asymptomatic disease to lethal congenital infection (Hanshaw et al., 1965;Starr and Gold, 1968). The most common features of congenital infection include hepatosplenomegaly, jaundice, petechiae, low birthweight, and microcephaly (Overall and Glasgow, 1970). Acquired CMV infections are often seen in patients with altered host resistance (Hill et al., 1964;Cangir and Sullivan, 1966;Sutton et al., 1967;Neiman et al., 1973), but these infections may also occur in normal hosts (Klemola et al., 1969; Jordan et al., 1973). Various manifestations of acquired CMV infection have been reported, e.g. infectious mononucleosis-like syndrome, hepatitis, postperfusion syndrome, etc. (Hanshaw et al., 1965;Embil et al., 1968;Klemola et al., 1969Klemola et al., , 1972 Jordan et al., 1973).Pneumonia occurs not infrequently in patients dying from CMV infection both in congenital disease (Medearis, 1964;McCracken et al., 1969) and in hosts with altered immunity (Hill et al., 1964;Rifkind et al., 1967