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- Published on: 7 January 2022
- Published on: 7 January 2022Listeria infection in young infants: a clear understanding of presenting clinical picture
Dear Editor,
We read with great interest recent study by Vergnano et al.1 investigating the epidemiology, age at infection, clinical characteristics, and outcome of listeria infection in the young infant. We congratulate the authors on providing a novel and interesting study that is relevant to the UK population and agree that the empirical use of amoxicillin in the paediatric infant should be reconsidered given the conclusions of their data.
However, when considering how we might be able to incorporate your novel findings into our centres practice, we required further clarification on table 2. The table describes increased oxygen requirement/respiratory support in 2/27 infants and yet, within results, report a prevalence of increased oxygen requirement/respiratory support of 89%. Furthermore, hypotension requiring inotropes is reported to occur in 4/27 infants but has a reported prevalence of 115%. These reported data appear to be miscalculated.
Clinical identification of invasive listeriosis through the understanding of symptoms within the infant is a key finding of this study given its poor description within the current literature2. We conducted a focused literature search and found scarce information on infant symptom prevalence; one notable exception includes the MONALISA study by Charlier et al.3 which recorded detailed clinical features (appendix p 21). Early diagnosis of invasive listeriosis has been demonstrated to have key prognostic value...
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None declared.