Neonatal Hepatitis

Infectious hepatitis and homologous serum jaundice are well-known disease entities affecting children and adults; however, hepatitis affecting the newborn is rarely considered and infrequently described. Craig and Landing 1 collected only 20 cases over a 10 year period (1941-1952) from the Boston Childrens Medical Center. These few cases were collected from a total of 2,500 autopsy protocols, 70 liver specimens taken at biopsy and 103 liver specimens obtained at post mortem. A report from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 2 to which a slide prepared from a specimen taken from our patient was submitted, concurred with the diagnosis and stated that it was the first biopsy specimen of this condition in the Registry of Hepatic Pathology. The Institute did have several examples on file, however, from autopsy cases. Hsia 3 and associates reviewed 156 cases of prolonged obstructive jaundice in infancy and found only four cases of hepatitis. Because