Nitric oxide could help doctors save a higher percentage of babies born prematurely from dying, it has been claimed.
A report published in today's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine shows that chronic lung disease, a major risk among prematurely-born babies, could be limited by delivering the gas to "very-low-weight infants".
Scientists from the Nitric Oxide Chronic Lung Disease Study Group (NOCLD), based around the US, said they had found no adverse effects to the use of the gas on babies.
The rate of survival among the 294 infants who received nitrous oxide was 43.9 per cent, compared to 36.8 per cent among those who received a placebo.
"Chronic lung disease is the most important long-term pulmonary complication for premature infants, so these results are very encouraging," said study leader Dr Roberta Ballard, a neonatologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the University of Pennsylvania.
Dr Ballard said she planned on continuing the study until the babies were two years of age before publishing her final conclusions by the end of next year.
Britain has the highest rate of premature births in Europe, according to Bliss, a charity for parents of prematurely born children around one in eight, or 80,000 babies each year.