Highly Premature Babies show Higher Risk of Autism: Study
A study conducted by a team of Canadian and US researchers concludes that highly premature born babies showed raised risk for Autism. The study carried out on 91 preterm infants found that 26 percent of them had a positive result on the autism screening tool. The latest study has been published in the Pediatrics journal.
Relevant demographic, prenatal, intra-partum, acute postnatal and short-term outcome data for all infants was gathered by experts at McGill University in Montreal, Children’s Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The infants were treated with traditional magnetic resonance imaging studies at preterm and/or term-adjusted age, with a follow-up at about 22 months.
The Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers, the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist were used by the team of researchers.
The new study is quite a breakthrough in detecting that very low-birth weight infants display early autistic signs, and till now this was an under-recognized aspect of underweight newborns.
Furthermore, the experts noted that the findings suggest that early screening for signs of autism may be acceptable in this high-risk population, followed by definitive autism testing in those with positive screening results.
The American Academy of Pediatrics advocates autism screening for all children by age 2. Though, Autism can’t be cured, early behavior therapy can help decrease its intensity.
Wednesday, April 2nd, was celebrated as the first World Autism Awareness Day.
April 5th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I think that the Autism Epidemic which began in the 1990’s is caused by the SIDS “Back to Sleep” campaign which began in 1992.
Infants that sleep on their backs compared to infants that sleep on their stomachs have numerous negative side effects:
- Social skills delays at 6 months (Dewey, Fleming, et al, 1998)
- Motor skills delays at 6 months (Dewey, Fleming, et al, 1998)
- Increased rates of gastroesophageal reflux (GER) (Corvaglia, 2007)
- Milestone delays (Davis, Moon, et al., 1998)
- Increased duration of sleep apnea episodes during REM sleep (Skadberg, Markestad, 1997)
- 6% decrease in sleep duration (Kahn, Grosswasser, et al.,1993)
- 1 in 300 infants had plagiocephaly in 1974 (Graham, Gomez, et al., 2005)
- 1 in 60 infants had plagiocephaly in 1996 (Graham, Gomez, et al., 2005)
Considering the following associations (not implying causation):
- 51% of children with Developmental Speech and Language Disorders have definite to borderline motor problems (Visscher, et al., 2007)
- 10% of children with deformational plagiocephaly have mild to severe mental delay (Kordestani, Patel, et al., 2006)
- 26% of infants with deformational plagiocephaly have mild to severe psychomotor delay (Kordestani, Patel, et al., 2006)
Additional Facts:
- 3% of U.S. infants are born with sleep apnea (120,000 per year).
- Sleep apnea has a 4 to 1 boy to girl ratio.
- Autism has a 4 to 1 boy to girl ratio.
April 14th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
What are the couse of autisme?