Platelet to lymphocyte ratio as a predictor of early onset neonatal sepsis/ Ali Mohamed Abdelaziz Gohar ; Supervised Nermin Ramy Mohamed Kamel , Iman Hassan Draz , Eman Ahmed Youssef

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Medicine - Department of Pediatrics

Background: Neonatal sepsis is a major health problem worldwide with a global prevalence of 1 to 10 per 1000 live births. Sepsis problem is much higher in the developing than in the developed countries, with sepsis-related mortality rate as high as 50% for untreated newborns. Early-onset neonatal sepsis which develops within the first three days of life has unspecific clinical symptoms and lack of accurate biomarkers which lead to delay in diagnosis and initiation of the therapy. Objective: The aim of this study is to calculate the platelet to lymphocyte ratio and other hematological indices and assess their prediction of early onset neonatal sepsis.Methods: A case-control study conducted to 78 neonates having clinical picture of sepsis and 78 control neonates appearing well aged {u2264}72 hours. Full demographic data, pre-natal history, natal history, anthropometric measures, physical examination, and laboratory studies were done. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between the two studied groups regarding platelets to lymphocytes ratio, neutrophils to lymphocytes ratio and all other ratios of platelets to different complete blood count values except platelets to immature polymorphonuclear cells ratio which had statistically significant difference between the two groups (P value=0.044) with 73.08% sensitivity and 50 % specificity at cutoff point 337.34. There was statistically significant difference between the two studied groups regarding immature to total polymorphonuclear cells ratio (P value <0.001) and immature to mature polymorphonuclear cells ratio (P value <0.001)

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