Chilling newborns may prevent brain damage

Infants whose brains are starved of oxygen at birth stand a better chance of surviving without damage if their body temperatures are chilled by 6 degrees Fahrenheit for three days, a new study said Wednesday.

“This is the first treatment that we have to reduce the brain injury in these children,” one of the study’s authors, Seetha Shankaran of Michigan’s Wayne State University, told Reuters.

She estimated that the cooling, which should be initiated within hours after birth, could prevent many cases of death, blindness and other disabilities in the 1,700 full-term infants born in the United States each year whose brains were temporarily cut off from blood or oxygen.

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