Emerging biomarkers for the diagnosis of severe neonatal infections applicable to low resource settings

More than 500 000 children die each year in low resource settings due to serious neonatal infections. Better diagnostics that can be utilized in these settings to identify infected infants have the potential to significantly reduce neonatal deaths and the associated morbidity. A systematic review was performed and identified more than 250 potential new biomarkers for the diagnosis of serious neonatal infections. Eight of these biomarkers were both high-performance and high-abundance (antithrombin, inter-α inhibitor proteins, interferon-γ inducible protein-10, interleukin-1 receptor antagonist, LPS binding protein, mannose binding lectin, serum amyloid A, resistin, visfatin), and are promising for the diagnosis of serious neonatal infections in low resource settings. Future clinical trials comparing these biomarkers with more traditional biomarkers seem warranted.