The inclusion criteria comprised willingness of the parents, a medically-acceptable stable condition in the samples, birth weight 1500-2500g, gestational age 34-36 weeks, a fifth-minute Apgar score 8-10, breast feeding and the absence of any disease at birth such as neonatal asphyxia, haemolytic condition, patent ductus arteriosus (PDA), respiratory distress syndrome (RDS) and sepsis. Exclusion criteria comprised unwillingness of the parents, beginning of phototherapy for the newborn, signs of infection during the study and leaving hospital before the end of the study period. Those selected were randomly allocated to the two groups. To be able to balance the groups on the basis of number of participants, the
randomisation was done within fixed-sized blocks each having a size of 4. Further, each block had 4 preterm infants and lots were drawn for the order of entry in each group. The samples were not blinded through treatment allocation. One trained personnel administered the massage and had no other role in the study and was blinded to our hypothesis. Another assistant measured and noted the transcutaneous bilirubin and stool frequency of the patients, and he was blinded to the randomisation. Finally, in order to ensure comparability, all lab testing was done by a single person