in the First 2 Months of Life by

During summer and fall, enterovirus infections are responsible for a considerable proportion of hospitalizations of young infants. We prospectively studied the incidence of enterovirus infections via real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in blood, feces, and cerebrospinal fluid samples from infants 60 days old who had received a clinical diagnosis of sepsis. Forty-five patients were included: 19 were admitted to the pediatric wards of 2 general hospitals, and 26 had been hospitalized since birth in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of a tertiary care hospital. None of the NICU patients developed enteroviral disease. In contrast, an enterovirus was detected in 11 (58%) of the patients admitted to the 2 general hospitals, 10 of whom (53%) showed evidence of systemic infection. Enterovirus infections are an important cause of sepsis in infants admitted to the hospital. Real-time PCR in serum was a rapid and sensitive method for diagnosis of enterovirus infection. Human enteroviruses are well-known agents of infec-tion in young infants, especially in the summer and fall months [1–3]. These viruses are usually transmitted horizontally, through fecal-oral and possibly oral-oral (respiratory) routes, but they may occasionally be trans-mitted vertically (perinatal infection). Clinical presen