Neonatal Screening for Cystic Fibrosis Does Not Affect Time to First Infection WithPseudomonas aeruginosa

Abstract

The results of the study suggest that health authorities should regard newborn screening for cystic fibrosis as an opportunity to improve care and outcomes among affected children and shift the focus from whether it is appropriate to screen to how to optimize biomedical and psychosocial outcomes of screening.

Risk factors for age at initial Pseudomonas acquisition in the cystic fibrosis epic observational cohort

“…The only characteristic consistently associated with age at Pa acquisition has been cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) genotype [14,16–19]. Despite early concerns that newborn screening might be associated with earlier acquisition of Pa [15], more recent studies have not implicated it as a risk factor [20–22]. …”

Early referral to cystic fibrosis specialist centre impacts on respiratory outcome

“…This suggests that a major contribution of early specialist CF care in Belgium consisted of this achievement of lower PA prevalence. It is actually now realized that a link between attendance at a centre and earlier acquisition of PA is not a fatality, neither during regular specialist CF care nor in the context of neonatal screening [28,29]. In reality it is largely manageable with a policy of patient segregation based on bacteriology (applied to ambulatory as well as hospitalised care), regular systematic bacteriological surveillance and early intervention once this organism is detected [30].…”

The Prognosis of Cystic Fibrosis - A Clinician's Perspective

“…Respiratory benefits have only recently been acknowledged (Accurso et al, 2005;Rosenfeld et al, 2010), as these were temporarily obscured by a publication indicating an increased risk of early chronic colonisation by PA in screened newborns (Farrell et al, 2003). This increased risk was eventually linked to the lack of measures aiming to limit cross infections in that particular centre and subsequent studies failed to confirm it (Siret et al, 2003;Sims et al, 2005;Baussano et al, 2006;Collins et al, 2008). In countries with a high level of medical care, neonatal screening enables clinicians to diagnose CF in infants before the age of 2 months, with demonstrable benefits (Sims et al, 2007).…”