Cardiac biomarkers in term newborns with common pathological conditions during the first 24 hours postpartum

Cardiac biomarkers may help diagnose and monitor different neonatal conditions, but their concentrations are still underexplored in common pathologies diagnosed within the first day. This study compared N-terminal pro b-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), high sensitivity troponin I (hs-TnI), creatine kinase (CK), and its isoenzyme creatine kinase-myocardial band (CK-MB) concentrations and activities, measured within the first 24 hours (h) postpartum, between the healthy term neonates and those with jaundice, perinatal infection, transient neurological abnormalities (TNA), and heart ultrasound abnormalities.

The study included 100 term newborns, whose cardiac biomarkers' concentrations were determined from the serum within 24 h postpartum on the Alinity ci analyzer (Abbott, Chicago, USA). The Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests, performed in SPSS Statistics v. 25.0 (IBM Corp., Armonk, USA), were used to test the significance of differences between the study groups, with P < 0.05 indicating significance.

Within first 24 h postpartum healthy newborns had significantly higher CK activities compared to those with jaundice (P = 0.047), perinatal infection (P = 0.012), or combination of both (P = 0.017). Lower CK activities were demonstrated in perinatal infection compared to TNA (P = 0.041). Other biomarkers' concentrations did not differ between the study groups. No significant differences were found in cardiac biomarkers' concentrations regarding gender or heart ultrasound findings.

During the first 24 h postpartum, only CK activities differed between healthy newborns and those with the common pathologic conditions, being lower in the newborns with jaundice and/or infection. Analogous differences were present between newborns with infection and those with TNA.