Applying a topical anesthetic half an hour beforehand reduces pain for children getting a measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) shot, according to a report by Canadian researchers.

The pain kids experience from an injection “should not be taken lightly, as it may condition the child to suffer more intensely from other types of pain later in life,” Dr. Gideon Koren from the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, told AMN Health.

With this in mind, Dr. Koren and colleagues tested the effectiveness of numbing the injection site with amethocaine gel in reducing the pain associated with MMR vaccination in a study of 120 infants.

Scores on a standard pain scale after vaccination were significantly lower in the children who had their arm dabbed with amethocaine (1.51) than in kids who had an inert placebo gel applied (2.29), the team reports in the medical journal Pediatrics.

Children pre-treated with amethocaine had significantly more skin reactions than did children that received placebo, but none of the skin reactions were serious.

The results of the study, the researchers note, are similar those that have shown lidocaine-prilocaine to be useful in reducing the pain of immunization. However, the amethocaine gel requires a shorter application time and appears to have a longer-lasting effect.

“There is an effective way to decrease vaccination pain in young children,” Koren concluded. “There is no reason not to hope that next generation will not fear needles, as previous generations did.”

SOURCE: Pediatrics, December 2004.