Protecting an infant from pain may be a matter of instinct. In a new study, researchers show that gently stroking babies during medical procedures, as parents intuitively do, reduces infants’ feelings of pain about as well as applying a topical anesthetic. The discovery suggests touch and tactile stimulation are effective means to mollify pain in newborns and an alternative to using drugs.
“Touch seems to have analgesic potential without the risk of side effects,” Rebeccah Slater, a pediatric neuroscientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who led the new research, said in a statement.
Touch has the power to sooth, especially skin-to-skin contact. Gentle and slow stroking of hairy skin activates a class of sensory nerves called C fibers. In adults, stimulating these fibers not only feels good, but also alleviates pain. Slater and her colleagues wondered if the same might be true for infants.
The researchers ...
