A recent retrospective analysis demonstrated improved neurologic and cognitive outcomes in former very preterm infants treated with EPO during their initial hospitalisation, compared with those not treated with EPO. The key finding of that study was, that infants with IVH showed remarkably strong benefit from EPO treatment, whereas no significant difference in outcome was found in infants without IVH (Neubauer AP et al., Ann Neurol, 2010).

However, these beneficial effects of EPO must be considered hypothetical (based on retrospective analyses) until confirmed or refuted by a randomized controlled trial.