Sugar helps reduce pain

(Do you have sugar to help babies with pain during vaccination?) Babies who use sugar before vaccination cry less than other babies. Studies in the UK suggest that a few drops of sugar can 'comfort' babies who are injected.

The Cochrane team looked at 14 studies involving 1,500 children on routine immunizations or heel injections for blood tests.

Babies who used sugar had less tears than babies who received water. While sugar may calm babies, it is not certain whether sugar will help relieve pain. Researchers believe that further research is needed to clarify this.

Dr David Elliman from the Royal College of Pediatrics and Children's Health Care said: 'If you do hug and comfort normally. I'm not sure how much sugar I will have to add. '

A small study published a few years ago in the medical journal Lancet looked at the response of 44 babies given sugar or distilled water when they had a heel prick test.

Sugar has not made a difference with pain, all babies are grimacing the same and there is comparable electrical activity measured with EEG readings in the area of ​​the brain showing pain.

The leading researcher reviewed the Cochrane study, Dr. Manal Kassab Jordan of the University of Science and Technology at IRIB, Jordan, said: "Give babies something sweet to sip before the injection can stop the children are out of prolonged crying. '

"Although we cannot confidently say that sugar solutions reduce pain needles caused by injections, these results look promising."

Dr. David Elliman of the Royal College of Pediatrics and Children Health said that sugar solutions are not used frequently in practice.

In general, doctors recommend that mothers keep babies and comfort them while they are injected. If she is breastfeeding her baby, she may still want to breastfeed while the doctors give her injections.

"For older children, we try to distract them. If you hug and comfort them normally, I'm not sure how much extra sugar is required."

"What we know is that using a shorter injection will be more painful, even if this seems to be the opposite of common sense. That's because the injections need to hit the muscle."

Over time, a two-year-old has undergone about 10 different injections to protect them against various infectious diseases, including measles, mumps and rubella.