Umbilical cord proteins help detect early sepsis in premature babies

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 blood of the umbilical blood of premature newborns, which signal acute systemic inflammation as a response to infection, ensuring objective and non -invasive diagnosis of early sepsis. This discovery can be saved by infants from prolonged exposure to unnecessary antibiotics, which exposes them to subsequent serious infections and dysregulation of the microbiome that can affect the immune system and metabolism. The results were published in.

Early sepsis occurs within 72 hours of life and occurs more often in premature infants. It usually develops in the uterus, and intra -member infection is often a trigger for premature delivery. At an early stage, sepsis is difficult to definitively diagnose on the basis of clinical symptoms, so antibiotics begin while waiting for the breeding results. Among infants with a very low birth weight in the country, 78 percent receive antibiotics after delivery. About 25 percent of these children are continued in the case of antibiotics, even when the breeding results are negative because they were supposed to have sepsis.

“Umbilical cord blood is an excellent source of information on the child’s health at the time of delivery. Blood of string biomarker The results can be available within 24 hours, enabling doctors to exclude early sepsis and interrupting antibiotics with more certainty, “said the main author of Leen B. Mithal, MD, specialist in pediatric infectious diseases in Northwestern, Kathleen and Adam Kulick, it could have been a medical school.

Dr Mithal and colleagues have also developed a machine learning diagnostic algorithm based on umbilical biomarkers and risk factors for the early beginning sepsis. This innovation has a patent in progress.

The next step will be confirmation of our findings through multi -product studies and clinical trials. “

Dr Leen B. Mithal, MD, specialist in pediatric infectious diseases

Dr Patrick Seed, president and research director at the Manne Research Institute, was the co -author of the study. He is the chairman of the research fund for children in the field of primary science and professor of pediatrics and microbiology – immunology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

The financing of this study came from the National Institutes of Health, Gerber Foundation, Friends of Prentice, Thrasher Research Fund, Kulick Family and Stanley Manne Children’s Research Institute in Lurie Children’s.