Study identifies umbilical cord blood biomarkers of early onset sepsis in preterm newborns

Scientists from Stanley Manne Children's Research Institute at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago and colleagues identified several proteins from the umbilical cord blood of preterm newborns that signal acute systemic inflammation as an immune response to infection, providing objective and noninvasive means to diagnose early onset sepsis. This finding could spare infants from prolonged exposure to unnecessary antibiotics, which leaves them at risk for subsequent serious infections and dysregulation of the microbiome that can impact the immune system and metabolism. Results were published in JCI Insight.

Early onset sepsis occurs within 72 hours of life and is more common in preterm infants. It usually develops in utero, and intraamniotic infection is often the trigger for preterm birth. Early onset sepsis is hard to diagnose definitively from clinical signs, so antibiotics are started while waiting for culture results. Among very low birth weight infants nationally, 78 percent receive antibiotics after delivery. Around 25 percent of these babies are continued on antibiotics even when culture results are negative because they are presumed to have sepsis.