Magnesium sulfate administered to mothers at risk of premature delivery may reduce children’ chances of being diagnosed with cerebral palsy in the future, a new study suggests. 

Cerebral palsy (CP), a disease that implies uncontrolled movement and posture, is caused by injuring the motor control centers of the young developing brain and can happen during pregnancy (in 75% of cases), during childbirth (in 5% of cases) or after the delivery of the baby, up to about age 3 (in 15% of cases). No cure has been found yet for the disease.

The study, the first of its kind, has been published in the Aug. 28 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, the Washington Post reported. More than 2,300 pregnant women at risk of preterm delivery and from 20 sites across the country participated. 50 percent of them received magnesium sulfate intravenously as they entered labor, while the other 50 percent received placebo.

Afterward, the researchers, who included Dr. Dwight Rouse, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, compared babies born to each group of mothers in order to find any dissimilarity in the rates of death or the incidence of cerebral palsy.

But no important difference has been tracked down. However, it has been revealed that moderate or severe CP was diagnosed only in 1.9% of the group who was given magnesium sulfate, by contrast with 3.5% in the other group.

"If deemed to be at high or immediate risk of delivery prior to 32 weeks, women and their doctors should consider using magnesium sulfate to prevent their child from having cerebral palsy," according to Dwight, who lead the study.