Fever as a predictor of invasive infections in newborns

In this secondary analysis of a single-center prospective registry, data from 2,411 infants were included, 76 of whom were diagnosed with invasive infections. The aim of the study was to analyze the performance of commonly used blood tests in febrile infants under 90 days of age. The researchers defined three groups of patients, based on the hours of fever reported by caregivers: less than 2 hours, between 2 and 12 hours, and more than 12 hours. The median duration of fever was 4 hours. The area under the curve was significantly lower in infants with fever lasting less than 2 hours for two biomarkers: absolute neutrophil count and C-reactive protein, but not for procalcitonin.