الفهرس 
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Abstract
Sepsis is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in the newborn, particularly in preterm, low birth weight infants, despite advances in neonatal care, infections remain common and sometimes life-threatening in neonates admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) (Stoll et al., 2011).
Despite extensive investigation, no single test meets the criteria that would make it an ideal marker for early diagnosis of sepsis in the newborn. Generally, screening includes a complete blood count with differential and may be accompanied by other adjuvant tests such as a C-reactive protein (CRP) (Kayange et al., 2010).
Screening tests, including white blood cell count and acute phase reactants, such as C-reactive protein (CRP), have poor positive predictive values in septic neonates: 40% in symptomatic neonates and as low as 1% to 2% in asymptomatic neonates (Terrin et al., 2011).
Neonatal blood culture positive rates have been found to range from 25-54% (Kayange et al., 2010).
Interleukin-6 belongs to the family of cytokines. It is one of the mediators of inflammation that are released early in the course of septic shock and is crucial in initiating the immune response, as well as the activation of T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes and lymphocytes proliferation and differentiation. In addition, interleukin-6 is a potent pyrogen. It also induces the release of acute phase proteins like C-reactive protein (CRP) (Tamayo et al., 2011).
Interleukin-6 reaches its peak after 2 hours of bacterial stimulus onset, so that its level may be elevated before the start of the symptoms and before the rise of routinely used markers (Campos et al., 2010). IL-6 was reported to appear earlier in plasma than CRP (Tess et al., 2011).
The purpose of this study was to evaluate accuracy of cord blood IL-6 compared with CRP as an early marker of EOS in neonates with prenatal risk factors for infection.
The study included 80 neonates that were divided into two groups, group(1) (cases) and group(2)(controles). The group(1) contained 29 males and 21 females with mean gestational age 34.8±3.4 and mean body weight 2.4±.6 .The c group(2) contained 12 males and 18 females with mean gestational age 35.2±3.8 and mean body weight 2.8±.6.