These data confirm the high prevalence of hyperglycemia among parenterally fed, extremely low birth-weight infants and show that high blood glucose concentrations increase the risk of early death and grade 3 or 4 intraventricular hemorrhage and the length of hospital stay among survivors without intraventricular hemorrhage, which suggests that prevention and treatment of hyperglycemia may improve the outcomes of extremely low birth-weight infants.

Preterm infants receiving Bifidobacterium supplements did not exhibit better postnatal growth compared with those who received placebo treatment. No adverse effects were associated with probiotic administration. Registered under ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier no. NCT01379417.

In the present study, approximately one in three (49/152, 32.2%) extremely low-birth-weight infants were demonstrated to require additional protein intake to supplement the standard fortification to achieve satisfactory weight gain. This additional protein fortification also resulted in a rapid increase in length-for-age (P < 0.001) and head circumference-for-age (P = 0.02) z scores.