Neonatal sepsis is a clinical syndrome of bacterial infection characterized by signs and symptoms of systemic involvement during the first month of life. Sepsis is the most common cause of neonatal mortality. Neonatal sepsis is an important but underestimated problem around the world. It is defined as disease affecting newborns ≤ 1 month of age with clinical symptoms and positive blood cultures. Infection is an important cause of morbidity and mortality during the neonatal period, despite the great improvements in intensive neonatal care and the use of extended spectrum antimicrobial agents. Polymorphonuclear (PMN) granulocytes play an important role as primary defence in the inflammatory reactions e.g sepsis and multiple organ dysfunction syndromes . They (PMN) use proteinases to digest the inflammatory mediators and tissue debris. One of these proteinases is PMN elastase. Neutrophil elastase is one of three hematopoietic serine proteases stored in large quantities in neutrophil cytoplasmic azurophilic granules. It acts in combination with reactive oxygen species to help degrade engulfed microorganisms inside phagolysosomes. These proteases are also externalized in an active form during neutrophil activation at inflammatory sites, thus contributing to the regulation of inflammatory and immune responses.
Objective: is to determine the sensitivity and specificity of PMN elastase levels for the diagnosis of neonatal sepsis and its use as an early indicator of neonatal sepsis .
Material and Methods:
The study group consisted of forty patients with the diagnosis of sepsis ( 20 confirmed by +ve blood culture plus 20 clinically suspected and the control group included twenty newborn). Inclusion criteria were formerly sought in our subjects who were diagnosed using the Tollner |
