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Sometimes a mother's immune system makes antibodies against her baby's platelets — the cells that stop bleeding — because the baby inherited a marker from the father that she does not carry. The antibodies cross the placenta and destroy the baby's platelets, a condition called fetal and neonatal…
Blood clots are one of the lesser-known risks of newborn intensive care. They form most often around the thin plastic tubes, called central lines, that carry nutrition and medicine into a sick baby's bloodstream. Three recent medical reports examined how often these clots happen, how doctors find…
Newborn babies are born with very little vitamin K, the nutrient the body needs to make blood clot, and for six decades a single injection given shortly after birth has protected them from rare but devastating bleeding. A 2026 review gathers what is known about why babies are so vulnerable, how…
Very premature babies often need blood transfusions, and those transfusions usually use blood donated by adults. A trial in Italy asked a new question: what if the blood came instead from donated umbilical cords, which is naturally richer in the type of hemoglobin a baby is born with? In its first…
If you have spent time beside an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), you may have heard the word transfusion more than once. Babies born very early and very small — under about two pounds, or 1,000 grams — almost always become anemic, meaning they run low on red blood cells. Red…
A large international study followed premature babies who had low platelet counts and found that giving platelet transfusions more freely did not help them and actually caused harm that lasted into early childhood. Babies given transfusions at a more generous threshold were more likely to have died or to have a developmental problem by age two than babies given them only when their counts fell much lower. The clear lesson: for these infants, a more cautious, "wait-and-watch" approach is safer.