 Recombinant EPO (r-EPO) may be given to premature infants to stimulate red blood cell production.Brown and Keith studied two groups of 40 very low birth weight (VLBW) infants to compare the erythropoietic response between two and five times a week dosages of recombinant human erythropoietin (r-EPO) using the same dose.They established that more frequent dosing of the same weekly amount of r-EPO generated a significant and continuous increase in Hb in VLBW infants.