Podcast: C-reactive protein for diagnosing infection in newborn infants

Doctors looking after newborn babies need to be able to detect infections early and accurately if they are to prevent the baby from becoming seriously ill. One of the tests suggested for doing this is to measure their c-reactive protein and this was assessed in a new Cochrane Review in January 2019. We asked the lead author, Jennifer Brown from the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination at the University of York in the UK, to tell us why this review is so important and what it found." Getting seriously ill with an infection is one of the biggest risks of death for newborn infants, especially those born preterm or unwell. The focus of our review are babies who are more than three days old and contract a so-called late-onset infection while they are in a neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU, for some other reason. We wanted to see if testing their c-reactive protein, or CRP, could diagnose infection accurately and quickly so that appropriate treatment with antibiotics could be given at the earliest opportunity. This is important because these babies are often already receiving many other treatments and investigations, and antibiotics should not be given to them unless they need them.The clinical signs of infection in newborn babies are non-specific and might be due to other conditions. Some of these are less serious and some will require other kinds of treatment. Therefore, a test called a blood culture is routinely used to see if the baby does have an infection but it can take ...
Source: Cochrane News and Events - Category: Information Technology Authors: Source Type: news