Preterm Babies Problems

By Suparna Chakaraborthy

Wednesday, November 24, 2010, 15:21

A baby is a precious gift from God and in many homes, couples who are expecting their baby look forward to see them enter the world soon.

In a new study, it was suggested that late preterm babies who are born between the age of 34 to 36 weeks have faced a rising risk of cognitive and emotional problems.

Nicole Talge, a researcher has stated that, " Previous studies reveal that babies born a little early are at-risk for short-term medical problems and possibly long-term behavioural and cognitive problems."

The findings for preterm babies by researchers have added that the mother's IQ and other demographic measures seems to have been the cause of these problems.

At the Michigan State University, researchers have found out that late preterm babies have been associated with such problems in history as well.

"We wanted to look at a diverse population of children and take into account important factors such as maternal IQ and birth weight for gestational age; do the previously reported associations still hold up?'' added Nicole Talge. He also added that, " We found late-preterm babies are between two and three times more likely at age 6 to have lower IQs, as well as higher levels of attention problems and symptoms of anxious, withdrawn behaviour."

An analysed data was found that not all babies born at the late-preterm stage have problems. It was also noted that the preterm babies who were born in the year 1983 and 1985 in urban and suburban regions of southeast Michigan were compared with children who have reached the age of 6 years.

"Children born late preterm exhibited lower levels of cognitive performance and higher levels of behavioural problems at the age of 6 even after accounting for socio-economic factors and maternal Iqs" added Nicole Talge. Researchers found that for each late preterm baby analyzed a full-term counterpart was randomly identified as part of a control group, taking into account birth weight for gestational age.