>>Finally, I really do not see a real need for the product.
Pin pricking a baby is not all that bad and has served the purpose
for a good many years.<<
>>Electronic Telegraph 2 Aug. 1998
Revealed: New-Born Babies Feel Pain Quicker and Longer
By Victoria MacDonald, Health Correspondent
University College London SCIENTISTS have shown for the first
time that new-born babies have a "unique" nervous system
which makes them respond differently to pain from adults.
In research that has far-reaching implications for the
medical and surgical treatments of infants, the scientists
have found that newborn children feel pain longer and more
sensitively. In premature babies, the mechanism that allows
older children and adults to "dampen down" the pain messages
does not work properly.
Until now it has been presumed that a baby's pain system
was too immature to function properly, or that they reacted
in a similar way to adults but less efficiently.
Researchers at University College London have now discovered
that babies' sensory systems have a unique pain-signalling
mechanism, which disappears as they grow older. This makes
them feel pain sooner than an older child or adult and because
of different "wiring" they can react to stimulation as if it
is pain – even when it is not.
It is only in the past 10 years that it has even been
acknowledged that babies and infants felt pain. Before that,
babies born prematurely – after less than 30 weeks of pregnancy
would undergo traumatic or surgical procedures without pain-killing drugs.
Ticky Wright, of the Women and Children's Welfare Fund, set
up to promote research into pain relief of the unborn child,
last night welcomed the new research. Mrs Wright said:
"I call this the ‘oops' syndrome. First we were told that
infants did not feel pain, then that the new-born baby did not,
then that a foetus did not. Each time it is looked at,
the boundaries are pushed further and further back. Yet masses
more research needs to done."
Maria Fitzgerald, the professor of developmental neurobiology
at the Thomas Lewis Pain Research Centre, based at UCL, said
the work has shown the importance of adequate pain relief for
infants and children. Writing in the Medical Research Council's journal, Prof Fitzgerald said: "Reports in clinical and
psychological literature indicate early injury or trauma can
have long-term consequences on sensory or pain behaviour that
extend into childhood or beyond."
Prof Fitzgerald said that because the spinal sensory nerve
cells worked differently in babies, even a simple skin wound
at birth could lead to the area becoming hypersensitive to
touch long after the wound had healed.
By studying these sensory nerve cells in infants
the scientists discovered that their reflex to pain or harm
is greater and more prolonged than that of adults. The sensory
nerve cells are also linked to larger areas of skin
which means they feel pain over a greater area of their body.
While adults produce pain reflexes only when they
encounter harmful stimulation, new-born children respond less selectively and produce the same reflex even to a light touch.
The scientists believe that this is because in babies the
sensory nerve fibres that communicate non-harmful touch -
known as A fibres - end in a different part of the spinal
cord from adults. But in adults the cells are connected
only to pain-transmitting C fibres.
Prof Fitzgerald said another contributing factor in
the new-born child's pain system was that the nerve pathways,
which carried pain-inhibiting messages from the brain stem to
the spinal cord, matured later than other parts of the system.
In the journal, Prof Fitzgerald wrote: "These nerve fibres
from the brain stem start to grow down the spinal cord early in
foetal life, but they do not extend branches into the spinal
cord for some time, and do not function fully until soon after
birth. "This means the premature baby cannot benefit from the
natural pain-killing system which in adults dampens down pain
messages as they enter the central nervous system.
Do these discoveries mean that the new-born infant's spinal
cord transmits a different pain signal to the cortex of that
of an adult? We think so." The UCL researchers now aim to
investigate the long-term consequences of early injuries
which they believe will change the care given to premature
and sick new-born babies.<<
|
