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Pain experienced by newborn babies, such as from
common painful medical procedures, could increase their sensitivity to
pain later in life.
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Based on experiments in rats, researchers think
that the painful experiences could change the baby's developing nervous
system.
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Researchers injected the paws of newborn rats
with an irritant that caused pain and swelling for five days.
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Later as adults, the rats showed a higher degree
of sensitivity in the paws that had been exposed to pain.
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Researchers also looked at the number of nerve
endings that grew from the hind paw and connected to the spinal cord,
and found that the tested animals had more nerve endings than the
control animals, which may have provided more means for pain information
to be transmitted.
Researchers state that "Ultimately we want
to try and determine the mechanism for the growth of the nerve fibers -- -than
we could might be able to avoid creating these additional pain pathways
in infants."
Science July 28, 2000;289;628-630.
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