When pregnant adult women get the disease, however, it can have very serious implications.
Rubella virus can cause miscarriages, stillbirth or babies born with severe abnormalities.
The greatest danger lies in a woman1s contacting rubella during the first few months of her pregnancy. Some of the common defects of rubella-affected babies are cataracts, deafness, heart defects, and mental retardation. Most cases of rubella occur in school-age children, frequently during the winter and spring months. By early adulthood about 80 to 90 percent of persons in the United States have been infected by the rubella virus and have developed immunity. These are two different diseases caused by different viruses.