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Home › Articles › Newborn and Infant Months › Group B Streptococcus

Group B Streptococcus

How It Affects Mom and Baby

By Jenn Director Knudsen

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This is key despite the low numbers, statistically speaking, of babies who contract GBS because the babies' resulting medical problems can be not only severe, but fatal, Dr. Lauria says.

"I have taken care of many babies that required long stays in the NICU [Neonatal Intensive Care Unit] for GBS sepsis," says Dr. Avery.

Infants are in peril of infection because their immune systems are immature and therefore at risk of systemic infection with GBS. Babies with group B streptococcus infection can develop pneumonia, meningitis and other serious infections that can result in seizures, brain injury, hearing loss, hypothermia, hypoglycemia and other problems.

Babies contract GBS from inhaling or swallowing bacteria while passing through the birth canal. But not all babies born vaginally to GBS-positive mothers are susceptible to infection.

Babies born at term – considered at 37 weeks gestation or later – and within 18 hours from the rupture of the mother's membranes (or bag of water) are at little risk for infection. Only three babies in 10,000 become infected. However, babies born prematurely, to a mother with a fever during labor, to a mother with a bladder infection due to GBS or to a mother whose membranes had ruptured more than 18 hours prior to birth, are most vulnerable to infection and a serious medical condition.

For example, 30 percent of infected babies develop meningitis, an inflammation of the brain and spinal cord that can result in death, according to DHMC. And one in 20 infected babies die, according to a health report from the Division of Neonatology with Children's Hospital of Iowa at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.


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