Racial Gap in Serious Baby Disease Narrowing in US

The gap between blacks and whites in the occurrence of a serious infectious disease of newborns is narrowing, due in part to recent guidelines that emphasize testing and treating mothers carrying the microbe.

Despite these gains, however, blacks are still twice as likely to get the disease, known as group B streptococcal or GBS. The bug that causes the infection is passed from the mother to the baby during delivery, and GBS is the most common life-threatening infection in newborns.

The guidelines, which were released in 2002 by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, recommended screening all pregnant women for GBS and administering antibiotics during labor to women found to be carrying the organism, according to information in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

Before the guidelines came out, the rate of GBS disease was 0.47 cases per 1000 live births, Dr. Sandra McCoy, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta , and colleagues note. After their release, the rate fell to 0.32 cases per 1000 live births, indicating a 34 percent drop in incidence.

In the last decade, the difference in GBS disease rates between black and white infants has decreased 68 percent, the report shows. However, the authors point out that black babies are still twice as likely as whites to have the disease.

The national health goal of a GBS rate below 0.5 cases per 1000 live births by 2010 was reached by whites in 1998. The goal has nearly been achieved in black infants, among whom the rate stood at 0.59 cases per 1000 live births last year.

"Starting in 1999, racial disparities in (GBS) disease platitude," the investigators state. "Declines in the rate of disease in black infants after release of the 2002 guidelines and new progress toward the 2010 national health objective might indicate that a universal screening strategy will further reduce this racial disparity."