Epsom salts may save premature babies

A study of pregnant New Zealand and Australian women suggests that Epsom salts given intravenously to women about to deliver extremely premature babies helps to reduce brain damage and death among the infants.

Children born before 30 weeks' gestation - about two months early - run a higher risk of death and brain problems, including cerebral palsy, says the preliminary results of the study, published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Caroline Crowther, a physician at the University of Adelaide, and colleagues tested the use of Epsom salts - magnesium sulphate - at 16 hospitals in Australia and New Zealand, involving 1062 women about to deliver very premature babies.

The programme ran from 1996 to 2000, with a follow-up of surviving children at 2 years of age.

Women in the study were given either Epsom salts or a placebo.

Children of the women given the salts had a 17 per cent reduced risk of death and cerebral palsy.

The apparent protective mechanism involved is not clear, the report says, but it appears the salts may help to prevent bleeding in the premature infant brain, a problem that can cause cerebral palsy.

"The potential clinically important improvement in paediatric outcomes from magnesium sulphate given to women immediately before very pre-term birth for neuroprotection urgently needs confirmation in further trials," the report says.

"Widespread use of prenatal magnesium sulphate as a neuroprotective agent cannot be recommended solely on the basis of the current study. Although minor adverse effects are common in women receiving magnesium sulphate, there do not appear to be any serious harmful effects for the women or their children," it adds.

The study was financed by various Australian health organisations.

In an editorial commenting on the study carried in the same issue, Jon Tyson and Larry Gilstrap, physicians at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston, called the findings encouraging.

They said a drop of 17 per cent in deaths and cerebral palsy "would have great clinical and public health importance".

- REUTERS