Due to my particular circumstances, I have been researching GBS as much as I can. What I have found is very interesting.
--First of all, it seems that taking the antibiotics reduces the risk of the infant getting any infection at all from 1 in 200 to 1 in 4,000, but it does NOT significantly (or at all?) reduce the number of infants that get a fatal case of it. In other words, the death rate is about the same. The CDC website mentions that the antibiotics reduce the
overall infection rate. Somehow, they fail to mention the death rate.
-- Secondly, the use of blanket antibiotics has already resulted in a much higher instance of drug-resistant strains. In fact, of those infants who do contract the infection, if the mother recieved antibiotics during labor they are more something like 60 - 80% more likely to have a drug-resistant strain, whereas babies who contract the disease whose mothers recieved no antibiotics are only about 15 - 20% likely to have a drug-resistant strain. Along with the drug-resistant GBS strains, blanket anti-biotic treatment of all women with GBS has resulted in a big rise in drug-resistant E. Coli. The infection and death counts for anti-biotic treated women to not count those who were infected or died from another bacteria strain made drug-resistant by the use of the antibiotic.
-- Thirdly, I was very interested to find out that they are creating a vaccine for GBS... why? Well, apparently, our bodies manufacture antibodies to GBS. These anti-bodies are actually transplacental (meaning they will pass from mothers blood through the placenta to the baby) and therefore protect the baby should the baby come in contact with the bacteria. The babies who end up with infections are those born to mothers who have little or no antibodies built up and therefore cannot pass on the protection. Those mothers who have the risk factors of fever during labor, a GBS urinary tract infection, etc. seem to be women whose antibodies are not adequate. Which would be why their babies seem to be at higher risk. The strength/numbers of the antibodies seem to increase with age, most likely due to the length of exposure to the bacteria. This would be why babies born to teens have a higher instance of infection than those born to older women. Also, it seems that the presence of these antibodies in the baby increases significantly after the... hmm, can't remember which week, sometime in the thirties... and grows stronger from that point on, which would be why preemies have a higher instance of contracting GBS infection.
I have learned a lot of this by perusing PubMed, a government site that is a library of medical journals and such. I don't know how to post links here and don't have the time to figure it out right now, but I doubt it would be hard to find with your search engine. Then I would just plug in "group beta strep" and "antibodies" or "vaccination" or something like that.
So, considering all that I have learned, I have a few questions:
Since we know there is a correlation between the presence of antibodies in the mother and the safety of the baby, and that certain numbers of antibodies seem to be most protective, why are we just testing for GBS and not also for the presence of the antibodies?
Why are we treating all mothers with antibiotics instead of just those who have inadequate or non-existent antibodies who are at greater risk?
Why is it that the vaccine is already presented with the idea of giving it to all women, even though at least one study admitted that the naturally-occuring antibodies did a better job of crossing the placenta and (presumably) protecting the baby. Shouldn't we still be testing for the presence of the antibodies first and then only if in adequate suggesting the vaccine?
If babies born prematurely and those born to teenagers have a significantly higher risk, why are they lumped into the general statistic of "out of every 200 women who test positive for GBS, 1 will have a child who contracts the GBS infection?" Because I am neither a teenager, nor is my baby premature (full-term as of tomorrow) and therefore I must be in a much lower risk category, correct?
I hope that this is helpful to someone. I am actually pretty upset about the way the medical profession (in general) has chosen to deal with this issue considering all that I have been learning.
M.
