The use of laboratory biomarkers for surveillance, diagnosis and prediction of clinical outcomes in neonatal sepsis and necrotising enterocolitis

Biomarkers have been used to differentiate systemic neonatal infection and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) from other non-infective neonatal conditions that share similar clinical features. With increasing understanding in biochemical characteristics of different categories of biomarkers, a specific mediator or a panel of mediators have been used in different aspects of clinical management in neonatal sepsis/NEC. This review focuses on how these biomarkers can be used in real-life clinical settings for daily surveillance, bedside point-of-care testing, early diagnosis and predicting the severity and prognosis of neonatal sepsis/NEC. In addition, with recent development of 'multi-omic' approaches and rapid advancement in knowledge of bioinformatics, more novel biomarkers and unique signatures of mediators would be discovered for diagnosis of specific diseases and organ injuries.