Endeavors magazine: Epsom salts help preemies

Epsom salts help preemies

A new use for an old-fashioned remedy.

by Beth Mole

In the Old Clinic, just past a row of archaic, closet-sized delivery rooms marked with stenciled numbers, John Thorp and his colleagues showed that common, old-fashioned Epsom salts can drastically reduce the risk of cerebral palsy in premature babies.

“I think one of the ironies and maybe one of the tragedies of modernity — and all the biological knowledge that has been accumulated — is that nobody really understands what causes premature birth,” Thorp says. The rate of premature birth has been rising since the 1980s.

One in ten premature babies will develop a permanent disability. The more premature the baby, the higher the risk of disability. One of the most common is cerebral palsy, which is caused by damage to a motor control center in the brain and can lead to a range of physical disabilities.

Cerebral palsy has huge societal costs too, Thorp says. The lifetime cost per patient runs into the millions of dollars, and malpractice suits associated with cerebral palsy can result in fifteen-million-dollar awards. Each year ten thousand babies develop the condition.

Thorp and his colleagues showed that treating women entering preterm labor with intravenous magnesium sulfate — Epsom salts — reduced the risk of cerebral palsy by 50 percent. The researchers found no harmful side effects in the 2,241 births in the study. Because of the safety, accessibility, and low cost of Epsom salts — just $3 at the local pharmacy — Thorp hopes the practice will be widely adopted.

“But,” he adds, “it would be better to not be born prematurely.” Thorp hopes that the medical community will increase research in women’s health and invest in preventing preterm births. “Historically, people don’t spend a lot of money on women’s health,” he says. “But we were all once in-utero and all had to get ex-utero — at the right time and healthy.”

Beth Mole is a doctoral student in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the School of Medicine at Carolina.

John Thorp is the Hugh McAllister Distinguished Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology and division director of Women’s Primary Healthcare in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke provided funding for his study.