Neonatal Medicine News

Changchun Changshen Life Sciences Ltd., a vaccine developer located in Changchun, China, has distributed approximately 250,000 substandard vaccines intended for the prevention of diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis in children, according to the Chinese state media outlet CGTN .

Pediatric health care-associated viral infections, or HAVIs, were significantly reduced by the development, implementation and refinement of targeted prevention practices, according to findings published in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

A report issued by WHO and UNICEF before the start of World Breastfeeding Week on August 1 revealed that approximately three in five newborns around the world waited more than 1 hour before being breastfed in 2017. Authors noted that although improvements have been made in the number of infants breasted in low- and middle-income countries — 37% in 2005 vs. 42% in 2017 — there is significant room for improvement.

A 2012 outbreak of adenovirus that occurred in a United States neonatal ICU was traced to medical instruments used for retinopathy of prematurity, or ROP, exams, according to a recent report in Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology.

Researchers said that annual funding of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief decreased infant mortality related to mother-to-child HIV transmission in Kenya by more than 10%. They suggested that when funding was examined on a cumulative basis, infant mortality dropped by nearly one-third.

An infectious cause could not be pinpointed in 72% of possible serious bacterial infections in neonates in South Asia, suggesting that “substantial proportion” of these episodes may not have been due to infection, according to a study in The Lancet.

A two-screen approach to diagnostic testing for congenital hypothyroidism, performed in newborns during the first 48 hours after birth and again at age 7 to 28 days, better identified missed cases of the disease vs. lowering the diagnostic threshold for a single test, according to an analysis published this week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

A two-screen approach to diagnostic testing for congenital hypothyroidism, performed in newborns during the first 48 hours after birth and again at age 7 to 28 days, better identified missed cases of the disease vs. lowering the diagnostic threshold for a single test, according to an analysis published this week in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Researchers from King’s College London found that offspring born to mothers with major depressive disorder in pregnancy showed altered behavior and biological stress response compared with those born to healthy mothers.

Immunizing pregnant women with Tdap protects newborn infants against pertussis, but a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases demonstrated that by 12 months postpartum, the immunogenicity of the vaccine has declined.