Can sugar help relief pain for babies?

Sugar can help relieve pain for babies during hospital procedures, a new review has found.
Babies, especially newborns and infants in intensive care units, routinely undergo multiple procedures, including vaccinations and blood tests. Because their pain regulation systems are still immature, infants experience pain differently from adults, often, more intensely.
A new Cochrane review found that sucrose can reduce pain during and immediately after the needle injection. The authors also found that sucrose appeared to be more effective than pacifiers.
“Parents may be surprised to learn that something as simple as a few drops of sugar solution can make a real difference to their baby’s comfort during blood tests,” said Ligyana Candido, co-author of the study from the University of Ottawa in Canada.
The authors analysed 29 trials including 2764 babies worldwide. In all of them, infants were assigned randomly to two or more treatment groups, sugar, and other pain relief methods such as pacifiers, breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact.
They found that newborn babies who were given sugar had less pain during and shortly after the procedure, compared to those who received nothing or water. (Euro News)