Thirdly, the analgesic properties of intra-oral sucrose were assessed with a cold pressor test for a subset of children (n = 250) (see [5] for more details). The concentration of sucrose used (24% wt/vol) has been shown to be an effective analgesic for newborn infants [43] and children [4,5]. In brief, children were told that they were going to play a game in which they would put their hand in a cold-water bath. The following two directives were given: (1) when your hand starts to hurt or feel uncomfortable, raise your other hand to let me know; (2) keep your hand in the water for as long as you can; if you can't take it any more, take your hand out of the water. The non-dominant hand was placed in a room temperature (37°C) water bath for 2 minutes to standardize skin temperature. At 1.5 minutes subjects placed in their mouths, without swallowing, 15–20 ml of either a sucrose solution or water, in randomized order. Thirty seconds later, they transferred their hand to the cold-water bath (10.00 ± 0.01°C), continuing
