Preterm infants in neonatal intensive care units, particularly those with catheters and intravenous lines, are at high risk for bacteremia—bloodstream infections that can cause lasting brain injury. A new study may change how people think about these infections, suggesting that inflammation is as important to address as the infection itself.

Using a novel mouse model of bloodstream infections in newborns, infectious disease physician-researcher Ofer Levy, MD, PhD, demonstrates that bacteremia can damage the brain even when the bacteria don’t actually get into the central nervous system. Findings were published online last week in the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

“There has been a lot of indirect epidemiologic evidence for a link between bacteremia, inflammation and cerebral injury, but it showed only a correlation, not causation,” says Levy. “Here we demonstrate directly in an animal model that inflammation alone can cause brain injury in newborns with bacteremia, even without entry of the bacteria to the central nervous system.” …