New Treatments Needed To Protect Premature Babies

Recent research shows that premature babies are vulnerable to damage to the white matter of the brain and, as a result, a different treatment approach is needed to prevent injury in these infants.

Babies born prior to the eighth month of gestation are considered premature, and as many as half of those born too early suffer some kind of brain injury.

“These injuries can lead to behavioral problems, developmental delay, cognitive impairment, or cerebral palsy,” said senior author of the study Dr. Mark P. Goldberg, professor of neurology and neurobiology at Washington University School of Medicine.

“In this study, we’ve identified a unique vulnerability in the developing brain’s white matter that likely contributes to those disabilities. We will be looking for new drug treatments to prevent injury,” Goldberg added.

The Study

Researchers had already linked a nervous system messenger compound known as glutamate to brain injury in adults, but the compound could not always be linked to damage found in the developing brain.

To learn more about how the brain of a premature infant responds to injury, Goldberg and other researchers conducted a “sliced-based” study on mice. The scientists studied slices of brain from 3-, 7-, 10- and 21-day old mice.

After depriving the slices of oxygen and glucose for an hour, researchers noted that in all cases the glial cells and axons suffered the most damage. When the researchers used glutamate receptor blocking drugs prior to cutting off glucose and oxygen, they found that the drugs reduced brain injury at all but one age.

“In the three-day-old mouse brain slices, the blockers couldn’t prevent damage to the axons. So something other than glutamate is killing the axons at that point in brain development,” said Goldberg.

The brain of a three-day old mouse is developmentally comparable to that of a human fetus at six to seven months of gestation.

According to Goldberg, the slice model “turns out to be a powerful tool for seeking out and testing new drugs, so we want to test a number of new pharmaceuticals to see if any can protect axons in early brain development.”

Contact a cerebral palsy attorney if your child suffered a brain injury during or shortly after birth, you may be entitled to compensation to help care for your child.