Separating Putative Pathogens from Background Contamination with Principal Orthogonal Decomposition: Evidence for Leptospira in the Ugandan Neonatal Septisome.

Neonatal sepsis (NS) is responsible for over 1 million yearly deaths worldwide. In the developing world, NS is often treated without an identified microbial pathogen. Amplicon sequencing of the bacterial 16S rRNA gene can be used to identify organisms that are difficult to detect by routine microbiological methods.

The microbial spectrum of neonatal sepsis in Uganda: recovery of culturable bacteria in mother-infant pairs.

Neonatal sepsis in the developing world is incompletely characterized. We seek to characterize the microbial spectrum involved in sepsis and determine the role of maternal transmission by comparing organisms that can be cultured from septic newborn infants and their mothers. From 80 consecutive mother-infant pairs meeting clinical criteria for neonatal sepsis, we collected infant blood and spinal fluid, and maternal blood and vaginal specimens.