Being born just a few weeks early might have a long-term impact on a child's intelligence quotient (IQ) and ability to pay attention.
Being born just a few weeks early might have a long-term impact on a child's intelligence quotient (IQ) and ability to pay attention.
Late-preterm birth (3436 weeks' gestation) has been associated with a risk for long-term cognitive and socio-emotional problems. However, many studies have not incorporated measures of important contributors to these outcomes, and it is unclear whether effects attributed to gestational age are separate from fetal growth or its proxy, birth weight for gestational age. To see if born pre-term influences a child IQ later on, researchers studied 168 pairs of babies from America - one born at term and one born between 34 and 36 weeks. The babies were born during 1983 and 1985. At age 6 years, they had their IQ scores measured and their teachers reported about their classroom behaviour.
It was found that late pre-term birth more than doubled the risk of having an IQ score of less than 85. Furthermore, the risks of having emotional difficulties, such as attention problems, were about twice as high for those born a little bit early compared to the children born at full-term. The findings did not alter even when the researchers took factors like maternal IQ, residential setting into account.
The researchers attributed the above findings to the fact that the brain is not fully developed at 34 to 36 weeks, and a lot of the higher-order brain functioning is developing during this period.
Late-preterm birth (3436 weeks' gestation) has been associated with a risk for long-term cognitive and socio-emotional problems. However, many studies have not incorporated measures of important contributors to these outcomes, and it is unclear whether effects attributed to gestational age are separate from fetal growth or its proxy, birth weight for gestational age. To see if born pre-term influences a child IQ later on, researchers studied 168 pairs of babies from America - one born at term and one born between 34 and 36 weeks. The babies were born during 1983 and 1985. At age 6 years, they had their IQ scores measured and their teachers reported about their classroom behaviour.
It was found that late pre-term birth more than doubled the risk of having an IQ score of less than 85. Furthermore, the risks of having emotional difficulties, such as attention problems, were about twice as high for those born a little bit early compared to the children born at full-term. The findings did not alter even when the researchers took factors like maternal IQ, residential setting into account.
The researchers attributed the above findings to the fact that the brain is not fully developed at 34 to 36 weeks, and a lot of the higher-order brain functioning is developing during this period.
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