Caffeine aids breathing in preemies

By CP

TORONTO — It’s one of those odd twists of medicine. One of the substances
women are told to limit during pregnancy can actually help premature babies to
breathe better once they’re out of the womb.

A Canadian-led international study has confirmed that treating severely
pre-term infants with caffeine improves their ability to breathe with less help
from ventilators and lowers the incidence of abnormal lung development compared
with preemies given a salt-and-water placebo.

“This is a treatment that has been used for many years, even though it’s not
actually licensed in Canada,” said principal investigator Dr. Barbara Schmidt, a
professor of pediatrics and clinical epidemiology at McMaster University. “But
everybody uses it because of the known short-term benefits, which is it reduces
the problem that pre-term babies have with irregular breathing, or interrupted
breathing.”

That irregular breathing, known as apnea, occurs in about 85 per cent of
infants born at less than 34 weeks’ gestation.

Source: http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/National/2006/05/18/1585663-sun.html