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This is the clinical history of a term baby born at home who presents a severe hyperbilirubinémia. The medical monitoring was assessed by a private midwife according to parental choice. On the third day of life, the newborn presented an icterus and was exposed to natural daylight in the familial greenhouse under the midwife recommandations. On that day, no laboratory test precised the bilirubin level. On the fifth day, a blood sampling revealed a very high blood bilirubinémia (31 mg/dl or 527 mmol/L), the baby is refered to our NICU and underwent an exchange transfusion. The radiological assessment report structural abnomalies in basal ganglia seen on both MRI and transfontannellar echography. These lesions are known to be responsible of cerebral palsy and hearing loos. The neurophysiologic investigations showed background abnormaly and depression. The extensive blood sampling excluded haemolysis. The clinical examination brought out neurologic impairement and weight loos in this exclusively breastfed baby. This clinical case point out the increasing risk of home Kernicterius as hospital stays diminish and homebirth enthousiasm rise up. The present clinical situation vouches for an adaptation of care giving to both mother and child at home in order to avoid this severe illness.

Screening standards in assisted reproductive technologies. Is the British Andrology Society recommendation to recruit cytomegalovirus negative semen donors only, a reasonable one?

The British Andrology Society recently recommended the exclusion of all cytomegalovirus (CMV) seropositive semen donors to prevent the risk of congenital CMV infection. The recommendation is based on the results of recent studies that identified a high percentage of symptomatic congenital CMV infections in newborns of women with CMV seropositivity pre-existing to pregnancy and on the fact that CMV can be detected in semen of CMV seropositive men. These are not new data. CMV seropositive women can infect their fetuses with their own latent CMV strain that can reactivate, or with an exogenous strain that can be transmitted to them by a sexual partner, but also by contacts, for example with an excreting child. The efficiency of these various ways of transmission to the fetus and the factors that could influence this transmission are for the moment completely unknown. An infectious virus is recovered by culture in the semen of <5% of CMV seropositive men. Exclusion of a large population of donors on the sole criteria of a positive CMV serology introduces the general message that this part of the male population is also not suitable as possible partners in couples who have no fertility problems. The problem of congenital infection in neonates of CMV seropositive women is a complex one that has just begun to be investigated. No data exists concerning this risk in the setting of assisted reproduction. We think that alternatives to the drastic BAS recommendation exist and should be more deeply discussed.