Warmth Offers Pain Relief For Babies During Vaccination

Keeping babies warm during vaccinations may offer better relief from pain than other methods currently used, researchers say.

A small trail at the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital found that warmer infants cried and grimaced less than babies given sugar pills or a dummy before vaccination.

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Vaccines are biological products that impart immunity to the recipient. Vaccines may be live attenuated, killed or toxoids.

The researchers said warming was "natural, easy and performed better" than other treatments, the BBC reported.

Doctors try to ease the pain to babies during routine procedures such as blood tests and vaccinations.

There are concerns about using drugs while the brain is still developing so other techniques such giving a sugar pill, suckling on a dummy, or breast-feeding are used.

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Sugar is one of the most common treatments used, however, there have been concerns about its effectiveness.

In this trial, 47 healthy infants were split into three groups - warming, sugar and suckling for their hepatitis B vaccination.

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Those in the warming group were placed under a medical "infant warmer system" before the injection. The other babies were either given sugar drops or a dummy.

The babies' responses to the injection - crying, grimacing and heart rate - were recorded.

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The babies who were warmed stopped crying and grimacing earlier than babies in the other groups. Nearly a quarter did not cry at all whereas all the babies given sugar cried.

In all the groups the heart rate rapidly rose after the injection and then decreased at broadly the same speed for each treatment.

"Providing natural warmth to newborn infants during a painful procedure decreases the crying and grimacing that normally accompanies a painful vaccination," the researchers concluded.

"We have shown that exposure to natural external warmth is as effective, if not more effective, as the analgesic and calming properties of sucrose taste and pacifier suckling," they added.

More research is needed before the pain-killing technique could be used regularly by doctors as questions such as the best temperature to use are still unanswered.

The study was published in the journal Pain.

Source-ANI