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DO you rely on a caffeine kick to sharpen you up in the morning? For premature infants, a dose of the drug may be even more important, by helping them to breathe.

Doctors have long prescribed caffeine to premature babies because it appears to protect against apnoea, a condition in which breathing repeatedly stops for more than 15 seconds. This has set them wondering what else a shot of caffeine might do, and to find out, Arne Ohlsson at the University of Toronto, Canada, and his colleagues set up a trial involving more than 2000 premature babies, mostly born at…

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