[en] 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.Although the disease is rare, congenital listeriosis still remain a possible challenging condition in
neonatal practice as revealed by this case report. This also shows the importance of multisite
bacterial culture beside conventional blood and CSF culture, in combination with histological
examination of the placenta for the diagnosis of congenital listeriosis.