WHAT EFFECT DOES SUCROSE HAVE ON NEUROBEHAVIOURAL OUTCOMES IN PREMATURE BABIES?
Sucrose is used around the world to relieve the pain from procedures for neonates. What is not known is whether the limitation of pain has a positive impact on neurobehavioural outcomes, as there is less deoxygenation, haemodynamic instability and increased intra-cranial pressure during the procedures.
Shreshthra Banga and colleagues from Lady Hardinge Medical College in New Delhi, India used a randomized controlled trial methodology to test this hypothesis using the domains of the Neurobehavioural Assessment of Preterm Infants Scale.
Ninety-three infants were included in the trial and no statistically significant differences were observed.
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IS A ONCE OR TWICE WEEKLY IRON SUPPLEMENTATION REGIME THE BEST WAY TO TREAT IRON DEFICIENCY ANAEMIA?
Iron deficiency anaemia is a common problem for children across the world. Which regime is most effective in treating anaemia is a key question, and this has been explored by Tárcio Aragão Matos and associates from the Department of Postgraduate Studies at the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil.
The infants studied were 6–18 months old and took part in a cluster randomized controlled trial. Both arms of the trial showed an improvement in haemoglobin, but the change was only Statistically significant in the twice weekly regime group.
The authors identify a number of limitations to their study including the small sample size and the short treatment period.
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WHAT IS THE EXPERIENCE OF KAWASAKI DISEASE?
In this edition of the Journal of Tropical Pediatrics we publish two papers on Kawasaki disease. Houda Boudiaf and Moussa Achir report on the disease from Birtraria Hospital, Algiers in Algeria, and Yunjia Tang and colleagues describe the experience from the Children’s Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou and the First People’s Hospital of Wuijiang, Jiangsu, China.
In Algeria, the incidence of cardiovascular complications is high, whereas East China has a low incidence of coronary artery abnormalities compared with other parts of China. In the Chinese study, the factors associated with coronary artery abnormalities were being male, lower serum albumin, higher erythrocyte sedimentation rate, Mycoplasma pneumoniae infection, intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG) started after 10 days and non-responders to IVIG.
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