Group B Strep: A Threat to Newborns That Doesn't Have to Be

(Page 2)

"We can't make a normal bacteria that's just living there go away by antibiotics," said Dr. Carol Baker, a professor of pediatrics, microbiology and immunology at the Baylor University College of Medicine, and head of the section for infectious diseases in the college's Department of Pediatrics. "But what we can do, if they are carrying the Group B strep, we give them antibiotic during labor.

"It fills the fluid around the baby, the amniotic fluid, with antibiotic," Baker said. "The baby is in an antibiotic bath, as it were." The antibiotic also floods the mother's blood and the birth canal.

"We can't make it [the germ] go completely away, but we can get the number really, really low -- enough so that the baby won't get a life-threatening infection," she said.

There's a one-in-100 chance that a GBS carrier's baby will become sick from infection with the bacterium. The risk rises to 4 percent under certain circumstances, including preterm delivery, prolonged rupture of the membranes, or fever during labor, according to the March of Dimes.

About 5 percent of babies infected with Group B strep die. Most who survive develop normally, but among those who develop meningitis as a result of GBS, up to 50 percent suffer lasting neurologic damage that can include cerebral palsy, sight and hearing loss, mental retardation, learning disabilities and seizures.

McGregor said that now that screening guidelines are in place, researchers want to eliminate the small number of infections that continue to occur. They are trying to figure out how to better improve the testing, making it quicker and more accurate. They're also looking at ways to make sure mothers get a sufficient dose of antibiotics, even if their labor appears to be a quick one, he said.

"Many hospitals used to have antibiotics on the ward that they could administer," McGregor said. "Now the request has to go to the pharmacy, and that can take an hour the mother might not have."

A potential vaccine that could be given to all women of childbearing years is another option.