Bilirubin-induced brain damage continues to be
an important risk among newborns worldwide.
Considerable progress has been made in charac-
terizing the molecular, biochemical, and cellular
events related to bilirubin neurotoxicity, and the
importance of non-neuronal cells and cell–cell in-
teractions is increasingly apparent. The complex
multifactorial nature of this injury continues to
confound identification of the threshold for neuro-
toxic bilirubin levels and accurate prediction of the
clinical occurrence of bilirubin encephalopathy.
