Caffeine Therapy for Premature Babies Safe and Effective: Study

Last Thursday, The Globe and Mail did a write-up about a new report that examines the role of caffeine in the treatment of premature babies. The results of the ongoing study find that caffeine is safe and effective in the treatment of apnea and helps to lower the risk of cerebral palsy and other motor-function disabilities.

Since the 1970s, caffeine has been used to treat apnea -- sporadic arrests in breathing -- that affect premature babies. High doses of caffeine, the equivalent of between four to six cups a day, are administered to premature babies in a practice that continues to this day. In the past, this treatment was believed to protect children against cognitive disabilities up to the time they were 18 months of age.

By the 1990s, concerns were being raised about the safety of the treatment. Animal studies led researchers to believe that caffeine might be toxic for developing brains, leading some to believe that a short-term problem was being solved at the expense of longer-term ones.  

The findings to date dispel this concern. Although the study finds that by the time the children were five years of age there was no difference in intelligence between children given caffeine and those who were not, it supports the continued use of caffeine in babies born prematurely. There is a significant improvement in children given the caffeine therapy in the earlier stages, both in terms of apnea and motor function disabilities.

"There is no other drug that we give in the neonatal unit that has ever been shown to have any benefits on any aspect of neurodevelopment up to five years," says Dr Barbara Schmidt, principal investigator for the study.