Archive for the 'Congenital Infections' Category

23
Jun

Congenital Infections. Conclusion

Posted by Jammy B. | No Comments

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The diagnosis; a lot is written both in diagnosis and treatment and it always changes, but I think with syphilis you have to have some common sense and know your patient and know what the future is and whether you are going to see them again, and things like that. The mother without adequate history of therapy and positive VDRL or FTA, that is somebody where the baby is likely to be infected. You would think an IgM test would be helpful but there are no commercial IgM tests that are accurate, because in previous tests they have been falsely positive very frequently. You can do serial VDRL’s in infants without symptoms when the mother has only a positive VDRL, and again you should have significant drop over a short period of time. Dark-field examination of the lesions in babies and also the cord, the cut cord, and obviously examine the CSF.
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The treatment; again, there has been a lot written about treatment and I think finally some people have become smart and tried to give the minimal therapy. I think today that you should treat every infant as if they have syphilis and if they also have neurologic involvement, which is 150,000 units per kilo per day, given q.8 or q.12, and most recommendations say 10-14 days. The aqueous procaine penicillin is also recommended, but I think if there is neurologic involvement it may not be as good.
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So just to finish up, for congenital infection workup in general you should have a high index of suspicion. Any small-for-dates baby should be studied. Babies with congenital heart disease and other problems, congenital malformations, congenital infections, should be considered. Babies with high risk maternal history. Looking for a safe and reliable means of treating ED? Buy Viagra oral jelly. And rather than doing TORCH titers, you want to do some titers but for CMV and rubella. The main thing is virus isolation using the specimens, IgM and IgG antibodies studies, but you want to be sure. You don’t necessarily want to believe the results you get if they aren’t in keeping with what you think is happening. I should have said this with toxoplasmosis, there are many IgM many commercial tests are notoriously falsely negative for IgM, if the IgG antibody is high. So these serologic tests should be sent to a very special laboratory, such as the laboratory in Palo Alto, California. So there can be both false negative and false positive IgM tests. The last thing is a very simple test doing a quantitative IgM. Just total IgM on babies who have some congenital defect or small-for-dates-for-age. If on them, if you have an elevated IgM, then you can go ahead with a further workup. So I think that takes care of congenital infections.

22
Jun

Parvovirus B19

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Next is parvovirus B19. The infection in pregnant women results in infection of the fetus and the timing of that depends a bit on what happens. But in the first half of pregnancy you get red cell aplasia and it may lead to fetal hydrops and abortion. The risk of abortion in maternal infection is about 5-8%. An important thing is that in babies that survive there has been no evidence of congenital malformations. So you don’t want to do what some obstetricians do, and that is perform an abortion to prevent an abortion. The important thing to realize in outbreaks to begin with, about 50% of adult women of child-bearing age already have antibody and they are at no risk. So there is not much you can do, but the big concern is with school teachers who are pregnant. One of the things you can do is antibody studies on them and if they are positive they have no risk.
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The next is toxoplasmosis. Toxoplasmosis gets missed. The congenital infection that anywhere between 70-90% are asymptomatic at birth, so this leads to sort of a lower estimate of the risk of this problem because many of these babies who are asymptomatic at birth go on to have problems later on in childhood, or to have evidence of retinitis later on in life. The actual infection rate is somewhere between 1:1000 births to 1:10,000 births. The manifestations; the list looks sort of like that that I showed you for rubella. The findings that you see here. The outcomes are retardation in 85% of diagnosed cases, convulsions 80%, spasticity 65%, impaired vision 60%, hydrocephalus and microcephalus 20%, deafness 15%. Of recognized cases at birth, only 10% are normal. Those staggering statistics bothered people for a long time. Now about ten years ago a national study was undertaken to look at treatment. I think that many of these babies look pretty bad and yet the amazing thing with treatment and a standardized protocol, or several protocols, that the treated babies had actually rather marked responses to treatment. So any baby today should be treated and treatment is complicated. So in general, if in doubt you should get help from somebody else and at least refer to a center where treatment can be done under controlled conditions. Pyrimethamine is difficult to administer, particularly in young babies because you suppress the blood count – both white cells and red cells – and the treatment is for a prolonged period; up to a year. But the results are very clear and it does lessen morbidity and prevents mortality.
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Okay, last congenital infection is syphilis. Risk of transmission, major risk after 16 weeks but there is evidence of some transmission before 16 weeks. In primary syphilis 70-100% chance of transmission, secondary syphilis 90% and latent syphilis there is still a 30% chance of transmission. The manifestations here again are those of active infection of fair duration with hepatomegaly, skeletal abnormalities similar to those of rubella, low birth weight, bullous lesions of the skin – which are teeming with spirochetes and a lot of people don’t recognize that but are highly contagious – hyperbilirubinemia, a severe pneumonia and splenomegaly. Anemia, hydrops, nasal discharge, painful limbs. They have meningitis and meningoencephalitis, nephritis and failure to thrive. This is a picture of the hand of a baby, and this is a very large lesion but these are loaded with organisms.
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15
Jun

Treatment for Congenital Infections

Posted by Jammy B. | No Comments

As far as treatment … I should go back. I realize I didn’t say anything about treatment with CMV and the babies with congenital CMV; you would like to treat them and with recent successes with toxoplasmosis it makes this more likely. A better idea. However a national study using ganciclovir failed to show benefit. Having said that, any severe baby with CMV I would treat with ganciclovir.
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Coming back to varicella infection; there is no data on treatment if they have any evidence of activity, which you don’t usually see, that I would treat these babies with acyclovir.
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The second aspect is infection near term and the risk period is very clear and it’s at a time when the mother is infected and the baby gets infected in utero but gets no antibody. This period is five days or less before delivery, or two days after delivery. These babies will have a congenital infection and will have an illness that looks like smallpox. That is the lesions come all at once, and the mortality, untreated, is very high; 30%. So any babies with these criteria should receive varicella zoster immune globulin at birth. They shouldn’t get prophylactic acyclovir, but as soon as any symptoms develop, they should be treated with acyclovir.
The next are enteroviruses and again enterovirus infections are exceedingly common in pregnant women in the summer. Fortunately, even though infection probably gets to the fetus, the majority of these are not a problem. However, infections in the last two weeks percentage-wise, most are mild but can lead at birth to severe meningoencephalitis and myocarditis and sepsis-like illness, with hepatitis and disseminated intravascular coagulation. The diagnosis again for enteroviruses is culture and now PCR of CSF and actually now PCR can be done on stool, throat and urine specimens as well.
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Treatment; there is no specific treatment. In nursery outbreaks that end in severe disease, giving IVIG makes sense, although there is little evidence of benefit. Lastly there is a new drug, not licensed yet, called proconerol which is in trial for neonatal infection but has been shown to be effective in older patients with meningitis.

12
Jun

Herpes and congenital infection

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Next is herpes and this is a newspaper from right after acyclovir was first licensed. The main situation with herpes is that the congenital infection is only a small part. The major problem with herpes is acquisition of virus infection during the birth process. So the congenital infection is actually rare but it is virtually always severe and almost never without residual. The important thing is a vesicular rash at birth and I’ve seen some real tragedies, because the vesicles here people look and think they are going see a vesicle like you see in a cold sore or what you see in older people with herpes. These vesicles are very thin-walled and they break very easily, and I’ve seen a tragedy where these vesicles were looked at and they said, “Well, they are not herpes.” So they can be very thin and not looking at all like what you would expect to find. Low birth weight, chorioretinitis, brain damage, small for gestational age, microcephaly, intracranial calcifications, microphthalmia and cataracts. This is a baby with congenital varicella who right at birth had vesicular lesions right here.
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The diagnosis again is culture. Herpes should grow out. Culture of lesions, if you have lesions, also culture from many sites; throat, blood buffy coat, urine, CSF and also direct antigen tests which are quicker and also PCR from CSF. One thing about PCR from CSF in newborns; it is the percent positive in only about 75% whereas older people with herpes encephalitis, it’s close to 95%. Lastly, specific IgM antibody. Treatment of course is acyclovir and in general, one of the mistakes that’s made is not to treat long enough and also to use too low a dose. The dose that’s indicated in most of the literature is 10 mg/kg per dose three times a day. But regularly, particularly in congenital infections, you should push this to 45 mg/kg per day and give it for at least three weeks and then evaluation because some of these should go on long term therapy.
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Next is congenital infection with varicella and there are two events. Early infection in pregnancy and then infection right before birth, maternal infection right before birth. The infections of the mother early in pregnancy, first of all is not too common and transmission to the baby is relatively rare. In fact the earlier epidemiologic literature said there was no risk. But then people noted a very specific syndrome, particularly with limb atrophy. More recent studies suggest the risk is somewhere around 2-3% of mothers infected in the first 20 weeks. Your findings are scars and hypopigmentation, hypoplasia of limbs, encephalitis and cortical atrophy. Most of these babies do very poorly. Low birth weight, immune defects, are the findings that you have here. Sometimes we’ve seen several babies with just chorioretinitis, no other findings. Frequently that plus some scars like they have apparently had some chicken pox-like lesions in utero and now they are scabbed over.
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04
Jun

Rubella

Posted by Jammy B. | 1 Comment

Okay, now to switch over to rubella. This is something that we really shouldn’t need to talk about today. Rubella should be gone, and yet there are a number of young adults who weren’t vaccinated and who have been protected by herd immunity and who are susceptible, particularly adults who travel who are serologically susceptible can still get rubella. The last major outbreak in California was nine years ago, but it is still a risk, a small risk. The risk period with rubella and the timing of maternal infection is greatest in the first eight weeks of pregnancy, in fact even if infection occurs a few weeks before onset of pregnancy. Here we have 16% from 13-20 weeks, but these abnormalities in general are not so clear cut, and the main risk really is in the first 12 weeks, or at most, 16 weeks. The risk after 20 weeks is zero. The main manifestations by percent occurrence is in utero death, in utero growth retardation and deafness are the most common manifestations. Cataracts in roughly one-third, retinopathy which is not particularly debilitating in about one-third, retardation in 10-20%, and frequently this is over-diagnosed because deafness and lack of development because of deafness is confused. Acute meningoencephalitis, other manifestations that you see here associated with acute infection. This is a baby, a very classic baby which used to be called “blueberry muffin” syndrome with extensive involvement and the outcome for these babies with disseminated disease and hepatosplenomegaly and frequently pneumonia was poor. This is a baby with congenital glaucoma. This baby actually has a cataract but also has microphthalmia. Radiolucency that you see here is a manifestation of rubella and of course also of congenital syphilis.
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The diagnosis of congenital rubella; the best method actually is culture, but you need to alert the lab as to what you are looking for because you need special testing in the laboratory to isolate rubella. Rubella is an easy virus to isolate and it should be done on newborns, because there are a lot of pitfalls in serology. A lot of false positives and false negatives. IgM-specific rubella antibody has less false positives than CMV, but about 10-20% of babies with congenital rubella have immune deficiency as a manifestation of their disease, so they may have negative antibody studies and yet have florid infection. Then lastly, persistence of IgG antibodies in a child who looks otherwise well; the transplacental antibodies should fall two-fold every month. So if the titer is not dropping then you have evidence of a congenital infection.
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Now we will go to hepatitis B. The major transmission risk factors for infection in the infant are listed here. First of all, presence of E antigen. The mother is surface antigen positive and also E antigen positive. In those circumstances there is an 80-95% transmission rate to the fetus. Asians have a higher attack rate than non-Asians. Acute hepatitis B in the third trimester has a higher rate. Then the transmission can be directly correlated with the number of surface antigen particles in the mother’s blood. There are five possible manifestations with congenital or neonatally acquired hepatitis B from the mother. The first is; asymptomatic transient antigenemia followed by recovery and antibody. This is the minority; only about 10%. Asymptomatic but persistent antigenemia, and this is unfortunately all too common. Hepatitis with clearing of antigen, and this is actually quite rare. And hepatitis which becomes chronic persistent or chronic active. These two really shouldn’t be separated because persistent antigenemia leads to bad outcome eventually. Then fulminant hepatitis with death. All of you know this, and we’ve been very successful, all pregnant women should be screened for active hepatitis B surface antigen and exposed in any situation where the mother is positive, in fact any situation where she is likely to be positive, the baby should be treated with HBIG within 12 hours of birth and then receive vaccine at birth, then one month and six months later. The recent sort of phobia relating to thimerosal, some people might overlook this and this is the first priority. If there is any likelihood of hepatitis B there shouldn’t be any concern about thimerosal in the vaccine and the baby should be vaccinated.
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03
Jun

Hepatomegaly, splenomegaly

Posted by Jammy B. | No Comments

The clinical manifestations are listed here; hepatomegaly, splenomegaly, hyperbilirubinemia. Generalized diffuse infection with CMV virus; the various manifestations you see here; cerebral calcifications. A big deal is made by the difference of these calcifications and toxoplasmosis, and it’s a good Board question. These are supposedly periventricular whereas in toxoplasmosis they are more diffuse. But that’s not hard and fast. The other manifestations are hemolytic anemia and interstitial pneumonia. This is a picture of a baby with severe involvement with marked petechial lesions throughout. Congenital anomalies with CMV compared to, for example rubella, actual anomalies are not that clear-cut. Cardiovascular anomalies, even though there is heart disease, it has no real pattern and it can involve all types of heart defects. Whereas with rubella you have some very specific cardiac defects. Female pink viagra at online canadian pharmacy. The other findings; hypospadias, gastrointestinal things such as duplications and musculoskeletal defects. But in general, the main manifestations of CMV are acute active infection involving what I showed you previously.

The diagnosis of CMV historically was looking for inclusion cells in the urine, and I’m sure nobody these days even knows what that is. That inclusion cells were epithelial cells, renal tubular epithelial cells, infected with virus and giving a typical cytopathic effect. So the main method of diagnosis is viral isolation. But the important thing in a newborn baby is you need to do this immediately. Two weeks later you don’t know whether that infection occurred after birth and therefore not a congenital infection. So one of the major things is that if you suspect congenital infection and CMV, look for virus immediately. Now in this day and age PCR can also be done as can direct antigen tests, but the definitive test is virus isolation. The places are urine, throat, CSF and really should add blood, buffy coat of the blood as well.
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The next is serology. Igm we’ve gone overboard with IgM assays and the right assay IgM positive indicates recent infection and is a very useful test. But there are frequent false positives and there are occasional false negatives. The false negatives are when there are very high IgG values. But false positives actually are much more common, both in pregnant women and also occasionally in babies. So you really want to go for culture. Hgh online with special discounts.