Does a syringeful of sugar make newborns’ pain go down?

What do Mary Poppins and neonatal doctors have in common? Both use sugar to ease medical unpleasantries.

Sucrose has long been used as an analgesic for newborns; but now a study published online today in the Lancet says that the sweetener has no effect on pain levels in the babies’ brains.

“Sucrose seems to blunt facial expression activity after painful procedures, but our data suggest that it … might not be an effective analgesic drug,” they wrote.

Newborns can’t really tell you exactly how much something hurts, so doctors have to judge by the babies’ facial contortions. When babies are given sugar right before a procedure, their faces don’t show the same anguished expression as they would otherwise.

To test whether the babies were actually experiencing less pain, the British researchers took advantage of standard blood drawing procedures. They recorded about 60 newborns’ brain activity as their heels were pricked for blood samples. Half of them were given sugar for pain relief, and half were given sterile water.

The sugar did indeed appear to inhibit infants’ facial reactions after their heels were pricked -- but behind those calmer faces, pain activity in the brain was about the same as the levels in their more expressive peers.

But a commentary also published in the Lancet called the findings “premature,” pointing out that the study was not set up to test for more subtle effects.

“Therefore we should not be surprised that the study failed to detect an effect of sucrose on cortical evoked responses,” the commentators wrote.

Until the sugar mystery is solved, parents trying to ease their infants’ pain can always resort to the good old fashioned cuddle.

-- Amina Khan / Los Angeles Times

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