Therapy protects newborns from oxygen loss

NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct 12, 2005 (UPI via COMTEX) -- Scientists in New Haven, Conn., say infants born with oxygen loss are protected from brain injury and death by an innovative therapy.

Called cool therapy, the procedure lowers the infant's entire body temperature by four degrees within the first six hours of life.

"We speculate that this therapy lowers the brain temperature as well as body temperature and slows down the injury process caused by birth asphyxia, which results in loss of oxygen to the brain," said Yale University researcher Dr. Richard Ehrenkranz, co-author of the study.

The scientists studied the effect of hypothermia in full-term infants born with asphyxia and related complications.

Researchers assigned 208 infants to either a control group or a whole-body cooling group where their body temperature was kept at 92.3 degrees for 72 hours, then slowly re-warmed.

When the infants were examined to assess their outcome at 18 to 22 months of age, 44 percent of those in the group treated with hypothermia developed a moderate to severe disability or had died, as compared with 62 percent in the control group.

The study appears in The New England Journal of Medicine

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