Neonatal infections are defined as bacteremia/sepsis, pneumonia, and meningitis, cause approximately 23.4% of neonatal deaths worldwide per year. Mostly all of them are caused by sepsis or pneumonia occurs during the first week of life. Over the last decade, there is no reduction in early neonatal mortality. To prevent the neonatal mortality, the mechanisms by which new-borns are acquiring infection need to be better understood. Neonatal sepsis risk factors include maternal factors, neonatal host factors, and virulence of infecting organism.
Neonatal infections is all about risk factors and pathways of transmission for early-onset neonatal sepsis globally. We aimed to evauate the risk of neonatal infection (excluding sexually transmitted diseases [STDs] or congenital infections) in the first week of life among new-borns of mothers with bacterial infection or colonization during the intrapartum period.
Neonatal sepsis is significantly complicated, especially neonates under very low birth-weight. Neonatal sepsis is defined into early- and late-onset sepsis, based on timing of infection and presumed mode of transmission. Early-onset sepsis (EOS) is defined by onset in the first week of life, with some studies limiting EOS to infections occuring in the first 72 hours due to maternal intrapartum transmission of invasive organisms. Late-onset sepsis is usually defined as infection occurring after a week and is attributed to pathogens acquired postnatally.