Brain damage could be avoided in more than 100 babies a year in the UK if they are given cooling treatment in the first six hours of life, according to a study in Bristol.

The research looked at babies who are starved of oxygen at or around the time of birth, which can cause serious brain damage, severe cerebral palsy and even death in around half of the most affected cases.

It focused on 325 infants affected by birth asphyxia, many of whom were recruited from the neonatal intensive care units at St Michael's and Southmead Hospitals.

At the age of 18 months, 71 out of 163 (44 per cent) of cooled babies survived without any neurological abnormality compared to 45 out of 162 (28 per cent) who were not given the treatment.

In the UK about 1,400 infants a year are affected by birth asphyxia.

As previously reported in the Evening Post, cooling babies who have suffered birth asphyxia is standard policy in the city's main maternity units.

The Total Body Hypothermia for Neonatal Encephalopathy Trial (Toby) was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and builds on work started by Professor Marianne Thoresen in Norway in 1992.

She was the first investigator to show in the laboratory that mild cooling reduces injury in the newborn brain after hypoxia, and is now professor of neonatal neurosciences at Bristol University.

Prof Thoresen and Andrew Whitelaw, professor of neonatal medicine at the university, started clinical trials in the city in 1998.

The findings have been passed to the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) to consider for implementation across hospitals.

Professor Thoresen said: "The initial trials using selective cooling of the head reported evidence of brain protection. However, cooling the whole body to 33 degrees is a much simpler technique than head cooling and that led to the MRC providing almost £1million in funding for the Toby trial.

"Cooling is arguably the most important advance in neonatal intensive care in the last decade."

Professor Thoresen, supported by research charity Sparks, is now planning to research the effect of treating affected newborns with the inhaled gas xenon as well as hypothermia to see if that will give added brain protection.