Calls to prevent newborn infection

Group B Streptococcus (a potentially life-threatening infection) is on the increase in newborn babies in the UK – yet countries with national screening programmes have seen incidence fall by as much as 86%.

The charity Group B Strep Support is calling for a move to ‘routine screening’ of all pregnant women, instead of a ‘risk-factor’ approach.

Urgent action is being called for to prevent the most common cause of lifethreatening infection in newborn babies – Group B Streptococcus (GBS). Each year, large numbers of babies are affected – while most babies recover, some are stillborn, more die in the first weeks of life and others suffer lifelong disability. GBS is a bacterium carried harmlessly in the vagina of <25% of pregnant women and intestinally in <30% of adults.1 It usually only becomes a problem if a baby is exposed to the bacterium around the time of labour as the immune systems of newborn infants are less able to fight off its potentially damaging effects. If GBS gets into the bloodstream or lungs of a newborn baby, it can cause septicaemia and pneumonia – each of which can be fatal and expensive to treat.2 Most GBS infections in babies develop within the first hours and days of life but, less commonly, it can develop up to age three months. In such cases, it is more likely to cause meningitis, which can be fatal or cause a range of lifelong disabilities including blindness, deafness, speech problems or learning impairments.2

Prevalence
 
It is not clear how many babies’ deaths and disabilities from GBS infections are excluded from official statistics because babies are rapidly treated on symptoms alone before a diagnosis is made, or because a baby is stillborn due to GBS infection and the cause of the infection is never investigated.3 In the UK, anything up to 88,000 babies a year are colonised with GBS at birth. In 2003, it was estimated that 340 babies4 per year, in the UK, developed GBS infection aged 0-6 days, with varying degrees of severity, and 39 died from their infection – although subsequent research shows that the true current incidence could be three times greater.5 A study in a major London hospital found an incidence of proven GBS infection of 1.1 per 1,000 live births, but this increased to 3.6 per 1,000 live births when it included probable cases – one case in every 277 babies born.5 UK wide, this would mean around 2,500 newborn babies requiring treatment, even though many may never be formally identified as infected with GBS.

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