Neonatal Medicine News

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices cautions against administering the rotavirus vaccine to infants in a NICU or nursery because of the potential for horizontal transmission of the live vaccine-strain virus. It also recommends age restrictions on the timing of the rotavirus vaccine, with the first dose to be given before 15 weeks of age. These intersecting recommendations create a vulnerable population of infants who require a prolonged intensive care stay and might age out of vaccine eligibility, according to a study published in the Journal of the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society.

The FDA has issued a class 1 recall — the most serious kind of recall — of Qiagen’s pipetting system filter tips. The recall affects 1,269,760 tips in 1,240 kits that are used to monitor antiviral treatment in patients with cytomegalovirus or to evaluate patients for myeloproliferative neoplasms.

About one-quarter of mothers in California who experience severe maternal morbidity during childbirth, or SMM, also give birth prematurely, according to findings published in The Journal of Maternal-Fetal and Neonatal Medicine. Researchers suggested that as many as one in 270 births — or about 1,900 families — are affected by what they called the “dual burden” of preterm birth and SMM every year.

Between August 1 and 7, the World Alliance for Breastfeeding Action, or WABA, will be highlighting ways in which breastfeeding can be endorsed and sustained throughout the world.

A quality improvement project successfully improved the number of infants aged 0 to 60 days who were treated for herpes simplex virus according to guideline recommendations, and it decreased the number of infants receiving treatment with acyclovir who were not high risk.

Many baby foods are incorrectly marketed toward infants aged younger than 6 months, and many of these foods are too high in sugar as well, according to two new studies from WHO.

Although benzodiazepine use during pregnancy did not seem to be linked to congenital or cardiac malformations, its use in combination with antidepressants may increase the risk for congenital malformations, study data published in Journal of Clinical Psychiatry showed.

Infants born to mothers with HIV but are not infected with the virus tend to be smaller at birth. However, research published in Clinical Infectious Diseases demonstrates that many HIV-exposed and uninfected, or HEU, children catch up in weight and length by early childhood.

Giving methadone to infants with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome based on their symptoms rather than in a fixed schedule significantly reduced their length of stay and resulted in fewer days of opioid treatment, according to findings of a single-center quality improvement study.

There are no links between exposure to the 2009 pandemic H1N1 influenza vaccine during pregnancy and early childhood health problems, according to a recent study published in The BMJ.