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July 26, 2002

U.S. IMMUNIZATION NEWS

"CDC Warns Pregnant Women That Common Strep Bacteria Can Harm Babies" Philadelphia Inquirer (www.philly.com/mld/inquirer) (07/25/02); McCullough, Mary

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised this week that women be tested late in their pregnancies for a common strep bacteria because, if left untreated, it can cause disabilities in or kill their newborns.  The CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have recommended since 1996 two strategies for determining which women should receive antibiotics during labor to prevent group B strep transmission: screening for bacteria late in pregnancy, or administering treatment based on risk factors, such as a fever during labor.  Screening works better than treatment based on risk factors, according to a study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine, since a fifth of women with no risk factors still carry the group B strep bacteria.  However, experts note that neither universal screening nor antibiotic treatment are long-term solutions to newborn strep infections, in part because of fears that the bacteria will develop resistance to treatment and because of concerns that eliminating it could let other opportunistic bacteria, like E. coli, become dominant.  The strep vaccine in development would be a long-term solution, but University of Washington Medical Center OB-GYN David Eschenbach wrote in an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine that there has been little political or industry interest in the vaccine.  "But the time has come when we need to rethink our strategies," he asserted.  Vaccine co-developer Carol J. Baker of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston also noted that while the vaccine research is going very well, "it's a matter of the (financial) commitment to go forward."

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