Assessment of Monocytes HLA-DR Expression in The Identification Of Early Onset Neonatal Infection

Neonatal sepsis is considered as one of the main causes of morbidity and mortality in neonates. Competent immune system plays an important role in prevention of neonatal sepsis. Diagnosis of neonatal infection is often based on clinical signs, however clinical symptoms of infections may not be specific and for this reason early diagnosis is often based on result of laboratory tests, which may not currently be adequate. Involvement of activation markers on monocytes as a screening tests help in improving the sensitivity of neonatal infection diagnostic utilities.The present study aims at studying to evaluate the diagnostic utilities of monocyte HLA-DR as an infection marker in the identification of early-onset clinical infection in newly born infants.The study was carried out on two groups the first one include 36 neonates with signs of infection (16 female and 20 male) and the second one include 17 neonates with no signs of infection as neonates control (9 female and 8 male).All patients were subjected to clinical history taking laying stress on perinatal history Maternal drug intake, maternal pre-eclampsia and respiratory distress syndrome and thorough clinical examination to detect signs of neonatal infection which include respiratory dysfunction (apnea, cyanosis grunting and intercostals retraction),circulatory dysfunction (tachycardia, bradycardia, poor perfusion and shock),neurological dysfunction (hypotonia, irritability and lethargy) and gastrointestinal dysfunction (feeding intolerance, abdominal distention, hepatomegaly and jaundice)..