A Recent study examined the long-term effects of low-birthweight on psychiatric problems in socially disadvantaged children from Detroit and others from a middle-class suburb. Low-birthweight babies are more likely than those with a healthy birthweight to develop psychiatric disturbances during childhood and through high school, research reveals.
The findings add another disease to the list of conditions, including respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, and irritable bowel syndrome, that low-birthweight individuals show a predisposition to.
For the study, Kipling Bohnert and Naomi Breslau (Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA) looked at the association between low birthweight and psychiatric problems among 413 children from a socially disadvantaged community in Detroit and 410 from a middle-class Detroit suburb.
Mothers and teachers both rated children's psychiatric disturbance at ages 6, 11, and 17 years.
Results showed that low-birthweight children had "modest excesses" of externalizing (odds ratio [OR] = 1.53) and internalizing disturbances (OR = 1.28), compared with normal birthweight children.
An increased incidence of attention problems was seen in low-birthweight individuals from the socially disadvantaged urban, but not the suburban, community, compared with their normal-birthweight counterparts, particularly for those with a very low birthweight, of 1,500 g or less.
Bohnert and Breslau note: "Attention problems at the start of schooling predict lower academic achievement later, controlling for key facts that contribute to academic test scores, which in turn predicts termination of schooling and curtailed educational attainment."
They suggest: "Early interventions to improve attention skills in urban low-birthweight children might yield better outcomes later."
Source: Arch Gen Psych 2008; 65: 1080-6
