Interest of multisite bacterial screening for the diagnosis of congenital listeriosis with negative blood culture: a case report

INTRODUCTION Listeria monocytogenes (LM) is known to cause severe invasive disease in pregnant women and in newborns. Fortunately, despite the wide natural distribution of this pathogen, clinically overt neonatal infections occurs rarely. As a consequence, listeriosis is not always considered for early onset neonatal infection, especially when blood culture is negative. Indeed, identification of listeria in the blood stream by conventional bacteriological methods remains the reference method for diagnosing listeriosis. We report a case of congenital listeriosis with negative blood culture despite typical chorioamnionitis, where the pathogen was cultured in gastric aspirate.