One year longitudinal follow-up of premature infants treated with D-penicillamine in the neonatal period.

A prospective controlled trial has recently been reported to show the effectiveness of D-penicillamine (DPA) in the prevention of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) among infants less than 2000 g birth-weight. The present paper is a comprehensive overview of a cohort of 204 prematures enrolled in the above study, with respect to mortality and outcome. Survival rate in the DPA treated group was the same as of those receiving conventional therapy. When the outcome of the DPA treated and the control infants was compared in terms of both major and minor impairments, the frequency of disabled and handicapped infants was higher in the control group. The same was observed with respect to the number of repeated hospital treatments, which was significantly higher among the control babies. The results suggest that DPA effectively prevents ROP among very-low-birth-weight infants, and also that the drug has no adverse effect on either mortality or late development.