Group B Streptococcus infection (GBS) has emerged as a serious disease, infecting 18,000 people in the United States annually including life-threatening illness in about 8,000 newly-born infants. To evaluate the efficiency of the current universal screening strategy for the management of GBS carriers a retrospective analysis was made of the records of 1,620 pregnant women in Qatar, 550 of whom were found to be carriers. These latter were then used as a group to be compared with 450 uninfected pregnant women in terms of nationality, parity, age, treatment, and outcome. Young and nullipara pregnant women had a high incidence of GBS but there was no significant effect on birth mortality and morbidity regardless of whether or not they received treatment with antibiotics. It is suggested that the cost of screening for GBS at the 35 th week of gestation cannot be justified.

Isolated thrombocytopenia is a common finding in neonates and infants. Physicians should rule out infection at first. Meanwhile, neonatal lupus erythematosus is classically revealed by cutaneous and cardiac manifestations. Hematological involvement is possible but rare. In this article, we report the case of a one-month-old boy who had been suffering from isolated thrombocytopenia and was diagnosed with neonatal lupus.