Sugar can help babies fight pain

The research shows that the dose works better than other techniques.
Knight Ridder Newspapers
KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- As soon as the teaspoon of liquid was squirted into her mouth, My'Kayla Taborn's eyes opened wide. She dribbled, drooled and excitedly lapped with her tongue.
Then the 2-month-old girl got a rude surprise that made her bawl -- three hypodermic needles quickly jabbed into her pudgy thighs as part of routine immunizations.
Future generations of infants may have reason to thank My'Kayla.
She is among the first participants in a study under way at Children's Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., to see whether a dose of sugar water can ease the pain of the multiple immunizations that babies must endure.
The research is part of a growing movement in the medical community to look for ways to minimize infants' pain during injections and other procedures, such as blood draws, circumcisions and spinal taps.
"Very few shots are totally painless, and infants are getting more shots than before," said Ginny Rahm, the nurse practitioner conducting the study. "We're not raising wimps. There's just no need for them to hurt if they don't have to."
Pain? What pain?
That kind of consideration was not always applied to the youngest patients. A generation ago, many doctors did not think newborns were even capable of experiencing pain. Their nervous systems were not sufficiently developed, the thinking went.
"Historically, pain management for children in general was very limited. But the world has changed. Now clinicians are solidly on board trying to manage pain," said Fran Porter Lang, a Washington University psychologist and authority on pediatric pain.
Pioneering research by Lang and others discovered that painful medical procedures cause infants' blood pressure and heart rates to rise. They cry and try to move away.
"They can't tell us that it's pain, but their responses are indicative of pain," Lang said. "We're really understanding that babies can feel as much pain, if not more, than older children and adults."
Researchers have looked at several ways to reduce the pain of infant vaccinations. Allowing parents to hold their baby during shots did not appear to work, one Canadian study found.
Anesthetic creams or gels applied to a baby's skin before a shot were effective, researchers found. But the anesthetics took about 30 minutes to an hour to work.
Research on sugar as a pain-reliever began with premature infants in intensive care units. Although preemies undergo many painful procedures, they are not good candidates for frequent doses of pain medications. Doctors found that sugar, often given with a pacifier, was an effective and benign alternative.