The use of laboratory biomarkers for surveillance, diagnosis and prediction of clinical outcomes in neonatal sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis

• Published in: Archives of disease in childhood. Fetal and neonatal edition Vol. 100; no. 5; pp. F448 - F452
• Main Authors: Ng, Pak Cheung, Ma, Terence Ping Yuen, Lam, Hugh Simon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England BMJ Publishing Group LTD 01.09.2015
• Subjects: Antibiotics; Bacteria; Biochemistry; Bioinformatics; Biomarkers; Chemokines; Cytokines; Disease; Early Diagnosis; Enterocolitis, Necrotizing - diagnosis; Fatty acids; Humans; Infant, Newborn; Infant, Premature; Infant, Premature, Diseases - diagnosis; Infections; Inflammation; Laboratories; Mortality; Neutrophils; Pathogens; Point-of-Care Systems; Prognosis; Proteins; Sepsis; Sepsis - diagnosis; Severity of Illness Index; Studies; Surveillance; infection; necrotising enterocolitis; infants; biomarkers
• ISSN: 1359-2998; 1468-2052; 1468-2052
• DOI: 10.1136/archdischild-2014-307656

Biomarkers have been used to differentiate systemic neonatal infection and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) from other non-infective neonatal conditions that share similar clinical features. With increasing understanding in biochemical characteristics of different categories of biomarkers, a specific mediator or a panel of mediators have been used in different aspects of clinical management in neonatal sepsis/NEC. This review focuses on how these biomarkers can be used in real-life clinical settings for daily surveillance, bedside point-of-care testing, early diagnosis and predicting the severity and prognosis of neonatal sepsis/NEC. In addition, with recent development of ‘multi-omic’ approaches and rapid advancement in knowledge of bioinformatics, more novel biomarkers and unique signatures of mediators would be discovered for diagnosis of specific diseases and organ injuries.