GBS

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CDC Urges Screening of Pregnant Women for Group B

Streptococcal Disease

ATLANTA, Sep 08 (Reuters Health) - Most mothers of neonates with group B

streptococcal

(GBS) disease did not receive the recommended antibiotics to prevent its

transmission from mother

to infant, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention.

A report in this week's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report indicate

that antibiotics were

administered during labor to only 21% of 322 mothers of neonates with

early-onset disease, and

" most of these did not receive the antibiotics sufficiently in advance

of delivery. "

According to the report, 190 cases of early-onset GBS disease in 1998

and 153 cases in 1999

were documented in surveillance areas in eight states. " The case

fatality ratio was 5%. In 1999, the

incidence of disease was 0.7 per 1000 live births among black infants,

0.5 among Hispanic infants,

and 0.3 among white infants. "

The report notes that the CDC recommends two strategies for prevention

of perinatal GBS disease.

" Under the risk-based approach, women in labor who have risk factors for

GBS transmission...are

offered intrapartum chemoprophylaxis. Under the screening-based

approach, all pregnant women

are tested for GBS carriage between 35 and 37 weeks' gestation...and GBS

carriers are offered

intrapartum chemoprophylaxis. "

" The data presented in this report showed us that some of the women who

had infants with

early-onset disease couldn't have been caught using the risk-based

approach--but we are

performing a larger study to see if the screening-based approach is

really better, " said Dr.

Schrag, Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer for the Centers for

Disease Control's National Center

for Infectious Disease.

" We have strong data that show that the prevention efforts have really

made a difference in terms of

the incidence of disease, " Dr. Schrag told Reuters Health.

" My recommendation to healthcare providers is that if they don't have a

strategy already in place, it

is definitely worth the effort to set one up in a way that would be easy

to implement, " said Dr.

Schrag. " [Healthcare providers] should be educating pregnant women about

GBS, because one in

four women may be carriers of the bacteria and there is prevention that

could reach those women. "

MMWR 2000;49:793-796.

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