Occurrence of different cancers in patients with Parkinson's disease

Every newborn baby in Britain is subjected to several painful procedures * Little is done to minimise the discomfort of these procedures * Placing 2 ml of a 25% or 50% sucrose solution on the tongue before heel prick significantly reduces crying time * There is a dose-response effect in the reduction of crying with increasing concentrations of sucrose * Sucrose on the tongue may be a useful and safe form of analgesia in newborn infants lifted its paw off a hotplate.6This effect was completely reversed by naltrexone.Blass and Hoffmeyer subsequently showed that 2 ml of 12% intraoral sucrose significantly reduced the duration of cry in newborn babies subjected to heel prick or circumcision.'Our group repeated that study with 7 5% sucrose and found no difference in the duration of crying.8However, we remained intrigued by the reports of Blass et al and undertook this study with different sucrose concen- trations.We conclude that in our first study we used a sucrose solution too weak to induce a measurable analgesic effect.Non-sucrose sweet substances such as saccharin also seem to increase pain latency in animals.9Other substances such as milk and in particular milk fat seem to have a similar effect through the endogenous opiate pathways.'0We do not know whether simply cuddling an infant after heel prick is as effective in reducing crying as 50% sucrose.We are undertaking further clinical studies to evaluate the effect of sucrose and other substances in pain prevention in immature babies and older children.