Oropouche virus is an insect-borne infection spreading through South America and the Caribbean that was long considered a mild week-long fever. Four laboratory studies published in 2026 show that it can cross the placenta and damage the cells that build a baby's brain. Here is what that research…

If you are pregnant and living with hepatitis C, or you have recently had a baby and you have the virus, the advice about testing your child has changed. For decades, families were told to wait until their child turned 18 months old. Now a single blood test taken somewhere between two and six…

Group B Streptococcus is a common bacterium that lives harmlessly in about one in five pregnancies but can cause life-threatening infection in a newborn. Antibiotics given during labour prevent much of the early illness, but they do nothing for infections that appear in the weeks after birth, and…

Cytomegalovirus is a very common virus that usually causes nothing worse than a mild cold — unless it is caught for the first time during pregnancy, when it can pass to the baby and sometimes affect hearing or brain development. Four studies published in the past year now show that an antiviral…

A vaccine given to a mother late in pregnancy can protect her baby from the most common cause of serious chest infections in infancy. Two medical reviews published in 2025 found that this protection is strong in the first three months of life and fades gradually afterwards, and that side effects…

Neonatal herpes is an uncommon but serious infection that a baby can catch around the time of birth. The first worldwide study of how often it happens estimates that it affects roughly one baby in every 10,000 born, and that this number has been creeping upward by about 3.5% each year. This article…

Syphilis is a treatable infection that can pass from a pregnant person to their baby during pregnancy. Cases in the United States are rising again, and two new American studies suggest the true number of affected babies is higher than official counts show — some infections are found too late in…

Premature babies who spend weeks in intensive care can develop a serious infection caused by a yeast called Candida, and doctors have long debated which antifungal medicine treats it best. A 2025 study from a hospital in Cairo, Egypt, compared two options in 56 premature babies and found that a…

In many parts of the world, the antibiotics normally given first to a newborn with a suspected blood infection no longer kill the bacteria causing it. Researchers are testing two old, inexpensive antibiotics as replacements, and before running a large trial they had to answer a simpler question…

Doctors have long hoped that giving newborns a friendly bacterium in the first days of life might protect them from dangerous infections. A carefully run study in Bangladesh recently tested one such product and found that, while the bacterium showed up in babies' stool for a few weeks, it faded…

Infection is one of the biggest dangers facing a baby born before 28 weeks of pregnancy, and much of what protects them happens in the ordinary, hourly work of nursing. The strongest evidence points somewhere many families would not expect: how many nurses are on shift, and how heavy their workload…

When a baby is born more than three months early, infection is one of the biggest dangers they face — but it is not always where doctors first look for it. Much of the effort to catch infection relies on a blood test, yet in these tiniest babies the infection often settles in a specific organ — the…