Neonatal Medicine News

According to research published in The Journal of Pediatrics, during a recent 17-year period, 4% of infants with necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, or spontaneous intestinal perforation, or SIP, in one NICU had intestinal infection with cytomegalovirus.

Longitudinal study data indicated that children exposed to maternal stress throughout gestation were three times more likely to develop a personality disorder, even after adjusting for other psychiatric disorders

Advances in science and medicine have dramatically improved the odds of survival for premature infants. However, these babies continue to face significant challenges, both immediately after birth and throughout their lives.

In the United States, the anticipated mortality rate for infants weighing less than 500 g who were born in the 1980s was nearly 100%, according to researchers.

According to results from the ongoing Tsepamo study in Botswana, infants born to women who took the integrase inhibitor dolutegravir for HIV infection from conception remained at an elevated risk for neural tube defects, with three in 1,000 born with these conditions. However, the findings, which were presented at the International AIDS Society Conference in Mexico City and published in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed that the risk is significantly lower than previously estimated.

An estimated 2.8 million pregnant women and newborns — approximately one every 11 seconds — die each year worldwide, mostly from preventable causes, according to a new report on female and child mortality released by UNICEF and WHO.

The incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza-associated hospital admissions among infants may be more than 2 times higher than current estimates, according to findings from four low- and middle-income countries published in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health.

The incidence of congenital syphilis-related hospitalizations among young infants increased considerably between 2009 and 2016 in the United States, according to research published in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal. At the same time, the cost of hospitalization charges related to congenital syphilis more than doubled.

According to the CDC, rubella was eliminated in the United States in 2004. However, international travel can leave unvaccinated individuals vulnerable to infection.

Results of a study conducted at six New York NICUs suggested that multiple-birth infants are at an increased risk for wrong-patient order errors, with as many as one in seven sets of twins and one in three sets of triplets or quadruplets in the study given orders for diagnostic tests and medications meant for another infant.