Context: The present study evaluated the effect of oropharyngeal colostrum immunotherapy (OCI) on weight gain in preterm newborns with very low birth weight admitted to a public maternal and child care unit.
Methods: This is a nonrandomized clinical trial with a historical control of preterm newborns weighing less than 1,500 gat birth who were allocated into two groups according to their neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) admission period: in the control group, those admitted between 2015 and 2018; and in the intervention group, those admitted after the implantation of an OCI protocol between 2018 and 2020. The treatment regimen consisted of eight daily administrations of 0.2 ml (four drops) of colostrum for 10 seconds in the oropharyngeal mucosa every three hours until the child’s seventh day of life. Historical control group data were collected retrospectively using medical records. Weight gain was calculated in grams/kilogram/day and z score by age at 28 days of life. The generalized estimating equation(GEE) method was adopted to evaluate the effect of OCI on weight gain in preterm infants.
Results: Greater weight gain was observed in the OCI group between 21 and 28 days (pre-OCI: mean: 11.79; SD: 10.24; OCI: mean: 16.29; SD: 11.72; p=0.05). In multivariate analysis, OCI increased the speed of weight gain by 1.99 g/kg/day (p<0.01) and the z score by age by 0.33 (p<0.01) after adjusting for confounding factors.
Conclusion: The OCI favored weight gain and increased the z score by age in the postneonatal period of very low preterm newborns.
Study registration: REBEC U1111-1222-0598. Registered 17/12/2018, https://ensaiosclinicos.gov.br/rg/RBR-2cyp7c/