BOSTON -- Most of us rely on a daily infusion of caffeine to wake up and feel alert, but at Children's Hospital in Boston, doctors and nurses are channeling that same power of caffeine to help some of the youngest, most vulnerable patients: premature babies.

"He was born on Sept. 13," said Angela Russo of her son, Jake. "He is 6 pounds 5 ounces now. He was 3 pounds 10 ounces when he was born."

Jake came 10 weeks early, and like most premature babies at Boston’s Children’s Hospital, he gets a daily dose of caffeine to help his underdeveloped breathing system grow stronger.

“It is actually a lot like giving a baby a cup of coffee,” said Dr. Anne Hansen, the neonatologist who runs the NICU at Children’s Hospital. “For babies, it does make them feel more awake, but it also stimulates their respiratory system.”

Children’s has been using caffeine therapy on most preemie babies for years, and a study released in this month’s New England Journal of Medicine bolsters the therapy’s effectiveness. Researchers at McMaster University in Canada tracked more than 2,000 infants who weighed 1,200 grams, or less than 2 pounds, for 18 months. Half got caffeine therapy, half did not.

“The babies who received the caffeine had lower rates of cerebral palsy and lower rates of what we call developmental delay,” said Hansen.

NICU nurse Mary Ellen Bouve administers the therapy either with an IV or directly into the baby’s mouth.

"Premature babies sometimes just need that extra boost to remind them to breathe,” Bouve said.

Caffeine therapy should not be used for full-term babies who have an occasional irregular breath. Doctors consider that perfectly normal. Rather, they say they only prescribe caffeine therapy when a preemie’s breathing repeatedly stops for 20 seconds or more, which could threaten the oxygen supply to the brain.

“What we are concerned about is when very pre-term infants have long pauses in their breathing. It’s long pauses in their breathing and significant drops in their oxygen content that we worry about,” Hansen said.

Before Russo’s son was born, she didn’t know the same caffeine coffee-drinkers rely on could help her tiny son, but now she is an advocate of the treatment. “It's helped. He definitely breathes better with it.”

The same team of researchers will continue to follow the progress of the premature babies in their study until the children turn 5 years old.