Recurrent culture-proven sepsis linked to retinopathy of prematurity in neonates: JAMA

This study included the mean (SD) birth weight of the 12,794 newborns in the GNN were 848 (229) g and the 1844 infants included in the NNN were 807 (215) g. 6370 newborns (49.8%) in GNN and 620 infants (33.6%) in NNN had any ROP, whereas 840 infants (6.6%) in GNN and 140 infants (7.6%) in NNN had treatment-warranted ROP.

With every incident of sepsis in both groups, the incidence of treatment-warranted ROP increased. Following the GNN multiple confounders' adjustment of this dataset, the number of sepsis episodes was linked to both ROP and treatment-warranted ROP when compared to 0 episodes. Propensity score matching verified these connections for any ROP. Also, the surgical NEC was linked to treatment-warranted ROP in the NNN dataset.

The outcome of this large-scale cohort analysis found that in preterm children delivered at fewer than 29 weeks, ROP and treatment-warranted ROP were particularly linked with culture-proven neonatal sepsis and recurrent sepsis episodes. It is important to do more research to determine the underlying processes of any inflammation-driven retinal morbidity and to determine if this connection is causative

Reference:

Glaser, K., Härtel, C., Klingenberg, C., Herting, E., Fortmann, M. I., Speer, C. P., Stensvold, H. J., Huncikova, Z., Rønnestad, A. E., Nentwich, M. M., Stahl, A., Dammann, O., Göpel, W., Faust, K., Müller, D., Thome, U., Guthmann, F., von der Wense, A., … Wieg, C. (2024). Neonatal Sepsis Episodes and Retinopathy of Prematurity in Very Preterm Infants. In JAMA Network Open (Vol. 7, Issue 7, p. e2423933). American Medical Association (AMA). https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.23933