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Case Reports
. 2025 Aug;53(4):1513-1516.
doi: 10.1007/s15010-025-02508-w. Epub 2025 Mar 25.

Trichomonas vaginalis in neonates

Herbert Hof  1 , K A Bode  2 , H Weisser  3
Affiliations
Case Reports

Trichomonas vaginalis in neonates

Herbert Hof et al. Infection. 2025 Aug.

Abstract

Background: Trichomonas vaginalis is one of the most prevalent pathogens responsible for non-viral sexually transmitted infections. The infection mainly affects women of childbearing age, with the potential for complications during and after pregnancy. Although perinatal transmission is rare, it carries the risk of resulting in neonatal infections. To date, only a dozen documented cases have been reported in the scientific literature. Since modern PCR techniques is more sensitive than conventional methods, it can be anticipated that this microbe will be detected more frequently, even in newborns.

Case presentation: The present report describes the clinical courses of two neonates contaminated with T. vaginalis documented by multiplex PCR. The pathogens were detected in newborns without obvious clinical suspicion of sexually transmitted infections.

Conclusion: T.vaginalis can be transmitted from an infected mother to her child during vaginal delivery resulting either in transient colonization or in manifest disease. It is likely that in the future, when multiplex PCR becomes more widely apllied, sexually transmitted infections will be detected more frequently in neonates.

Keywords: Trichomonas vaginalis; Detection by PCR; Neonatal infections.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethical approval: As these case reports are retrospective and present unidentified data, no special review and approval by the local ethics committee were required. However, for reasons of thoroughness and transparency, the legal and data protection department of Klinikum Fulda gAG, University Medicine Marburg-Campus Fulda was consulted and gave its approval for submission. Consent to participate and consent to publish: Informed consent was not required as the data and samples were analyzed retrospectively and the study did not contain any personal information, photographs or images. All potentially identifying data were anonymized or pseudonymized. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

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