Approximately 150,000 to 500,000 infants greater than 34 weeks gestational age are admitted to NICUs annually who are at risk for systemic infection. These infants all receive systemic antibiotic therapy. However, the vast majority of these infants are not infected, but rather have symptoms that are secondary to other medical conditions. The current standard of care for evaluating neonatal sepsis is blood culturing, which lacks sensitivity and is not informative prior to at least 24 to 46 hours. As a result, there is prolonged use of antibiotic therapy in many newborns that could be shortened if a more rapid test to rule out sepsis was available. This application proposes to investigate two potential tests, a PCR-based amplification assay for detecting bacterial 16S ribosomal DNA and an ELISA-based assay for defensins, to determine their usefulness as early predictors of systemic neonatal infection.
| Brozanski, B S; Jones, J G; Krohn, M J et al. (2006) Use of polymerase chain reaction as a diagnostic tool for neonatal sepsis can result in a decrease in use of antibiotics and total neonatal intensive care unit length of stay. J Perinatol 26:688-92 |
| Jordan, Jeanne A; Durso, Mary Beth; Butchko, Allyson R et al. (2006) Evaluating the near-term infant for early onset sepsis: progress and challenges to consider with 16S rDNA polymerase chain reaction testing. J Mol Diagn 8:357-63 |
| Jordan, Jeanne A; Butchko, Allyson R; Durso, Mary Beth (2005) Use of pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA fragments to differentiate between bacteria responsible for neonatal sepsis. J Mol Diagn 7:105-10 |
| Jordan, Jeanne A; Durso, Mary Beth (2005) Real-time polymerase chain reaction for detecting bacterial DNA directly from blood of neonates being evaluated for sepsis. J Mol Diagn 7:575-81 |
