It is not generally known that the act of birth and the first moments of life after birth itself may also be difficult for full-term infants. Beautiful and easy pregnancy does not per se guarantee that there will be no problems. For example, these perfectly developed full-term infants can also become victims of major injuries such as stroke (i.e arterial infarcts: blockage of small arterial branches causing ischemia in the brain tissue) or ischemic brain injury resulting from cerebral asphyxia (i.e. unexpected absence of vital activity at birth). These injuries require urgent and complex maneuvers of resuscitation and use of specific therapies (such as cooling, hypothermia). These two diseases occur with an incidence of about one baby in every thousand births. Unfortunately, this figure has not improved in recent years.

In the world of prematurity, research efforts must be aimed at these two principal directions. First, a more thorough study of hemorrhages affecting the more preterm infants (intraventricular hemorrhages and bleedings of the cerebellum), along with white matter abnormalities is required. Second, is to study how we can help the growth and development of the pre-term baby’s brain, an immature organ that has not developed as it should have if it had been well protected and longer in the mother’s womb. This goal requires a more complex, more structured effort to understand how we can replicate as much as possible the conditions of intrauterine life for newborns weighting less than 1500 or even 1000 grams which undergo the difficult moments of neonatal intensive care.

Eu-Brain was created to promote the awareness of the necessity to take these steps forward.