The standard laboratory markers of sepsis at the time of initial evaluation for infants later diagnosed with ‘clinical’ and ‘no’ sepsis groups are compared in Table 3. Seven infants had a lumbar puncture performed (six with clinical sepsis), with menin- gitis suspected in one based on the finding of 500 lymphocytes in cerebrospinal fluid. Although with early onset sepsis a lumbar puncture is not routine if the main symptom is respiratory distress (rather if there is no focus of infection), in our study six of the seven infants who had a lumbar puncture had it done at less than 30 h of age, of whom three had some respiratory distress.