IL6 and Sepsis: We only used episodes of culture-confirmed sepsis and values taken in infants who never had an infection and only prior to surgery, while Ebenebe et al. used culture-confirmed sepsis and clinical sepsis defined as elevated CRP levels with clinical symptoms and controls defined by the absence of early-onset sepsis.17 As argued above, the use of one cut-off value for the first three days of life does not take into account the physiologically high serum IL-6 on the first day of life.