April 3 (Bloomberg) -- About 1 in 43 infants in the U.S. suffers abuse or neglect each year, with the greatest risk among the newly born, according to the first U.S. study of maltreatment focused on babies.

About 91,000 infants were neglected or subjected to physical attacks such as shaking or beating, and about a third were in their first week of life when that happened, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in today's report, citing data from October 2005 to September 2006. In all, 905,000 children up to 18 years were mistreated.

Newborns were more likely to be neglected, or be deprived of basic needs such as clothing and medical care, the study found. Physical abuse such as kicking, biting and burning as well as beating and shaking, occurred at the same rate as in older age groups. Emotional, psychological and sexual abuse were assigned separate categories.

``It's a picture you don't even want to imagine,'' said Ileana Arias, director of the CDC's center for injury prevention, in a conference call. ``Maltreatment is taking place earlier than we had been focusing on, and so what we need to do is identify the best points of intervention to make sure that doesn't happen.''

Monitoring at Hospitals

The finding of more neglect in the first week of life may be partly due to closer monitoring at hospitals, which often give drug tests to the child or mother after birth, according to the report. Because most pregnant women receive prenatal care and 99 percent of births occur in medical settings, those visits should be used to educate parents and screen for risk of abuse before it happens, the CDC said.

The study looked at confirmed cases of abuse or neglect reported in 45 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Data wasn't available from Alaska, Maryland, North Dakota, Pennsylvania and Vermont. Among the states that were included, maltreatment occurred at a rate of 23 cases per 1,000 infants.

About 69 percent of maltreated children suffered neglect, while 13 percent were physically harmed, according to the report. The rest suffered emotional, psychological and sexual abuse. About 500 infants died from abuse or neglect.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Randall in New York at trandall6@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: April 3, 2008 15:38 EDT