TY  - JOUR
A1  - Teufel, Ulrike
A1  - Burgard, Peter
A1  - Meyburg, Jochen
A1  - Lindner, Martin
A1  - Pöschl, Johannes
A1  - Ruef, Peter
A1  - Hoffmann, Georg Friedrich
A1  - Kölker, Stefan
T1  - High blood pressure, a red flag for the neonatal manifestation of urea cycle disorders
T2  - Orphanet journal of rare diseases
N2  - Background: Neonatal manifestation of life-threatening hyperammonemic encephalopathy in urea cycle disorders (UCD) is often misdiagnosed as neonatal sepsis, resulting in significantly delayed start of specific treatment and poor outcome. The major aim of this study was to identify specific initial symptoms or signs to clinically distinguish hyperammonemic encephalopathy in neonates from neonatal sepsis in order to identify affected individuals with UCD and to start metabolic therapy without delay. Furthermore, we evaluated the impact of diagnostic delay, peak plasma ammonium (NH4+) concentration, mode of emergency treatment and transfer to a tertiary referral center on the outcome.
Methods: Detailed information of 17 patients (born between 1994 and 2012) with confirmed diagnosis of UCD and neonatal hyperammonemic encephalopathy were collected from the original medical records.
Results: The initially suspected diagnosis was neonatal sepsis in all patients, but was not confirmed in any of them. Unlike neonatal sepsis and not previously reported blood pressure increased above the 95th percentile in 13 (81%) of UCD patients before emergency treatment was started. Respiratory alkalosis was found in 11 (65%) of UCD patients, and in 14 (81%) plasma NH4+concentrations further increased despite initiation of metabolic therapy.
Conclusion: Detection of high blood pressure could be a valuable parameter for distinguishing neonatal sepsis from neonatal manifestation of UCD. Since high blood pressure is not typical for neonatal sepsis, other reasons such as encephalopathy and especially hyperammonemic encephalopathy (caused by e.g. UCD) should be searched for immediately. However, our result that the majority of newborns with UCD initially present with high blood pressure has to be evaluated in larger patient cohorts.
KW  - Neonatal urea cycle disorders
KW  - Hypertension
KW  - Clinical presentation
KW  - Hyperammonemic encephalopathy
Y1  - 2019
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/50074
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-500749
SN  - 1750-1172
N1  - Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
VL  - 14
IS  - 1, Art. 80
SP  - 1
EP  - 7
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -