Does that baby with a virus also have a bacterial infection?

By Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd|2018-09-23T19:16:30-04:00September 23rd, 2018|Infectious Diseases|

As soon as you can I would recommend you read the following post from Andrew Tagg and Don’t forget the bubbles – The fantastic Australian pediatric blog.

It reviews the recent paper from Mahajan et al from The Journal of Pediatrics and was a planned secondary analysis of an earlier PECARN study. The aim is to answer the following question: In well-appearing febrile children under the age of 60 days with a proven viral infection, how many also have a concomitant serious bacterial illness (SBI)?

Ultimately the big conclusions from the study, as well as many of the limitations are well spelled out in the DFTB post. Read it now!

Don’t Forget the Bubbles: One Way or Another / Bacterial Co-Infection

References

Mahajan P, Browne LR, Levine DA, Cohen DM, Gattu R, Linakis JG, Anders J, Borgialli D, Vitale M, Dayan PS, Casper TC. Risk of Bacterial Coinfections in Febrile Infants 60 Days Old and Younger with Documented Viral Infections. The Journal of pediatrics. 2018 Sep 6.

About the Author: Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd

Brad Sobolewski, MD, MEd is a Professor of Pediatric Emergency Medicine and an Associate Director for the Pediatric Residency Training Program at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. He is on Twitter/X @PEMTweets, on Instagram @BradSobolewski, authors the Pediatric Emergency Medicine site PEMBlog and is the host and creator of PEM Currents: The Pediatric Emergency Medicine Podcast. All views are strictly my own and not official medical advice.