June 4, 2012 Clippings

Premature babies suffer mental problems later in life

Bipolar disorder, depression and psychosis were all more likely, the study in The Archives of General Psychiatry suggested.

Full-term pregnancies last for around 40 weeks, but one in 13 babies are born prematurely, before 36 weeks.

Researchers at the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden analysed data from 1.3m people born in Sweden between 1973 and 1985.

They found 10,523 people were admitted to hospital with psychiatric disorders, and 580 of those had been born prematurely.

The academics showed full-term children had a two in 1,000 chance of being admitted. The risk was four in 1,000 for premature babies born before 36 weeks and six in 1,000 for those born before 32 weeks.

Very premature babies were more than seven times more like to have bipolar disorder and nearly three times as likely to have depression.

One of the researchers, Dr Chiara Nosarti, said the real figures might be higher as milder conditions would not have needed a hospital visit.

However, she cautioned that the risk was low and the vast majority of premature babies are perfectly healthy.

"I don't think parents should be worried, but we know that preterm birth confers an increased vulnerability to a variety of psychiatric conditions and perhaps parents should be aware of this and monitor early signs of later more serious problems," she told the BBC.

She speculates that "disrupted development" may affect the babies' brains.

Source: www.timesofindia.com

04.06.2012

Study: Women who smoke give birth to lighter babies

Women who smoke during pregnancy give birth to lighter and smaller babies, says a Spanish study.

The findings were borne out by research conducted by the University of Zaragoza in Spain on 1,216 newly born babies.

Such babies were between 180 and 230 grams thinner than the offspring of non-smoking mothers, which averages 216 grams, the journal Early Human Development reports.

Furthermore, subcutaneous (below the skin) skinfolds, which show the amount of fat, are lower in children born of mothers who smoked, according to a Zaragoza statement.

"Given the scarce bibliography on the subject, we had to assess the impact of tobacco on the body composition of babies born to mothers who smoked during pregnancy," Gerardo Rodriguez from Zaragoza who led the study, told SINC, Spain's public scientific information service.

The experts analysed the newly-born full-term babies with a gestational age of 37 weeks of 1,216 mothers (22.1 percent of whom smoked an average of eight cigarettes daily) at the University Clinical Hospital.

The children of those mothers who had admitted to consuming alcohol or taking illegal drugs during pregnancy were excluded from the study.

Source: www.dnaindia.com

04.06.2012

Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness

Ayn Rand