Perinatal listeriosis. A report of six cases

Abstract

Summary. The clinical and pathological findings in six patients with perinatal listeriosis are presented. One pregnancy resulted in a liveborn infant who developed listerial septicaemia but made a complete recovery following prompt treatment. The other pregnancies ended in intrauterine death. Often antecedent maternal prodromal illness preceded expulsion of a macerated fetus by only a matter of hours making early diagnosis difficult. In all cases the diagnosis of listerial infection was apparent only after the birth of the fetus or new born.

Listeria Monocytogenes

“…in Scotland it rose from 0.5 : 1,000,000 in 1971 to 7.0 : 1,000,000 in 1988 [11]. These properties for mother and baby make Listeria Monocytogenes a dangerous pathogen [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The depressed cell mediated immunity observed in normal pregnant women can be responsible for their higher susceptibility to Listeriosis [14].…”

“…The pregnancy outcome of 32 cases is presented in Table 1 [1][2][3][4][5][6][7]10]. Only 15% of women infected with Listeriosus had normal perinatal outcome; 41% the pregnancies were complicated by perinatal loss and 19% of the newborn became permanently damaged.…”

The Respiratory System

“…Other bacterial infections with characteristic appearances include Listeria monocytogenes . Involved as part of disseminated disease , the lung may show the typical granulomatous abscesses involving parenchyma and vessels as seen in other tissues (Vawter 1981;Khong et al 1986). Congenital syphilis is not common in most developed countries, but should be considered as a cause of a congenital pneumonia where there are interstitial infiltrates of lymphocytes, plasma cells and "onionskinning" of pulmonary arteries (Oppenheimer and Dahms 1981).…”