Racial Gap in Serious Baby Disease Narrowing in US
Thu Jun 17, 2004 04:19 PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - The gap between blacks and whites in the occurrence of a serious infectious disease of newborns is narrowing, due in part to recent guidelines that emphasize testing and treating mothers carrying the microbe.
Despite these gains, however, blacks are still twice as likely to get the disease, known as group B streptococcal or GBS. The bug that causes the infection is passed from the mother to the baby during delivery, and GBS is the most common life-threatening infection in newborns.
The guidelines, which were released in 2002 by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, recommended screening all pregnant women for GBS and administering antibiotics during labor to women found to be carrying the organism, according to information in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.