{"id":628826,"date":"2026-09-27T05:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T05:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/628826\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T05:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T05:52:16","slug":"blood-test-differentiates-bacterial-and-viral-infections-in-newborns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/628826\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Test Differentiates Bacterial and Viral Infections in Newborns"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ACredit: Catherine Delahaye\/ Getty Images \/ Stone<\/p>\n

A blood test may help doctors assess babies with fever to identify the most serious bacterial infections that require antibiotics.<\/p>\n

Results presented today at the European Emergency Medicine Congress show the test accurately separated bacterial infections from viral infections and non-infectious conditions in 60 babies treated at the pediatric emergency department of IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini in Genoa, Italy.<\/p>\n

Fever in babies younger than three months is considered a medical emergency because their developing immune systems can leave them vulnerable to life-threatening infections. Doctors therefore need to determine whether a baby requires antibiotics or can instead be monitored while recovering from a viral infection.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn very young babies with fever, distinguishing serious bacterial infection from self-limiting viral illness is a major diagnostic dilemma,\u201d said Tommaso Bellini, MD, PhD, pediatric emergency physician at the IRCCS Istituto Giannina Gaslini. \u201cOur standard biomarkers can help show when there might be a bacterial infection, but they also create \u2018false positives,\u2019 which drives overtreatment. This can mean unnecessary lumbar punctures, antibiotics, and hospital admissions for infants who turn out to have only a virus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bellini and colleagues collected blood samples from 60 infants and quantified two molecules found on white blood cells that are known to increase in response to an infection. CD64, found on neutrophils, is linked to bacterial infections, while CD169, found on monocytes, is associated with viral infections.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese two marker molecules show opposite signatures\u2014during a viral infection one is high while the other is low, and during a bacterial infection the reverse is true,\u201d said Bellini. \u201cCombining them into a single ratio separated bacterial from non-bacterial infection with very high accuracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

The resulting scores showed marked differences depending on the type of infection present. Babies without an infection had an average ratio of 1.10, while those with confirmed viral infections showed an average score of 0.33. Meanwhile, babies with confirmed bacterial infections had an average score of 16.22. In this relatively small patient sample, the test achieved 100% sensitivity and 96.6% specificity.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor parents, taking a very young baby with a fever into the emergency department can be a very worrying time. We have to treat every case as potentially serious until we know otherwise,\u201d said Ma\u0161a Sori\u0107, MD, PhD, head of the emergency department at University Hospital Merkur in Zagreb, Croatia. \u201cThis is a small study, but the findings are very positive. If these results can be reinforced in a larger trial, they could mean that we have a much better way of knowing which babies probably have a bacterial infection that needs antibiotics, and which babies probably do not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The study is still ongoing and expected to eventually include 75 infants. The researchers are now also beginning a larger multicenter prospective study, called DISCERN, that will assess the blood test in 300 to 500 babies. Further development work will also be needed to bring the technology to routine clinical practice.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis assessment is currently run on flow cytometry, which needs specialized equipment and trained staff. It is not yet a bedside test, and not widely available outside of specialist labs,\u201d said Bellini. \u201cTranslating it into a fast, low-cost, point-of-care format is our next research goal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Catherine Delahaye\/ Getty Images \/ Stone A blood test may help doctors assess babies with fever to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":628827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[284341,163,85,4746,46,7144,3173,3171,64359],"class_list":["post-628826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bacterial-diseases","tag-health","tag-il","tag-infectious-diseases","tag-israel","tag-molecular-dx","tag-news-features","tag-topics","tag-viral-diseases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=628826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/628826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/628827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=628826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=628826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=628826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}