250 Premature Babies take part in Blood Treatment Trials

Researchers from Sydney’s Westmead Hospital are conducting international trial using blood product on babies with serious infections, instead of just antibiotics.

Researchers from Sydney’s Westmead Hospital are conducting international trial using blood product on babies with serious infections, instead of just antibiotics. The hope is that the combination treatment will improve their outcomes and aid in their maturation.Bradley Myers was born ten weeks premature and like many premature babies, developed a lung infection.He was given the usual doses of antibiotics but was also asked to take part in an international trial of a new combination treatment.”He’s going great, going really well, he’s been taken off a ventilator and only requires oxygen, so for him that’s really good,” his mother Angela says.Along with antibiotics, doctors at Sydney’s Westmead Hospital are giving babies immunoglobin or antibodies gleaned from blood.It’s a substance which helps fight infections and is deficient in premature babies. “The problem is that not all babies do as well as we think they could do and there is some evidence that adding this immunoglobulin therapy will improve outcomes for these babies,” Professor William Tarnow-Mordi, Professor of Medicine at Westmead Hospital said.Two hundred and fifty Australian babies are taking part in the trial, set up by the National Health and Medical Research Council.Smaller trials of the combination therapy show some promising evidence that it will help babies to get better from infections.Doctors hope to recruit 5,000 babies world wide for the trial. They’ll each be followed until they turn two years old.As for Bradley, while doctors can’t say whether he received the combination treatment or simply antibiotics, they are very pleased with his progress.”He’s on the mend now and we are hoping he can leave hospital in the not too distant future,” Dr Tarnow-Mordi says.Results of the trial aren’t expected for five years.(ABC Health News Dec 2003)