Thursday July 17, 2008 – (foodconsumer.org) -- Infants born prematurely would have a higher risk of physical, mental, and social impairments in their adulthood compared to those born at the expected time, according to a study in Norway published on July 17 in the new England Journal of Medicine.

Dr. Dag Moster was cited by Reuters as saying there is a dose-response relationship between gestational age and all the studied impairments, meaning the earlier the infant was born, the severer the outcomes.

For the study, Dr. Moster and colleagues from the University of Bergen looked at data from the national registries to examine the association between the gestational age and the health outcomes in their adults in 870,000 infants of at least 23 Weeks’ gestational age, but without congenital anomalies.   The subjects were born between 1967 and 1983 and survived until 2003.

Among the preterm infants, the overall risk of cerebral palsy increased over time.   The researchers observed that 6% of those born at the gestational age between 28 and 30 weeks and 9% of those born between 23 and 27 weeks had cerebral palsy.

The results showed that mental retardation, psychological disorders, behavior and emotion, vision or hearing problems were at a higher rate among those who were born prematurely.