Babies who stay longer inside mom's womb are smarter - study

Researchers have known that babies born prematurely are at risk for slowed brain development, but a couple of extra weeks in the womb might make a difference even among those considered "normal term" - between 37 and 41 weeks, according to a U.S. study.

Children born on the shorter end of that range scored lower on math and reading tests as 8-year-olds than those born later, researchers wrote in the journal Pediatrics, but they added that the differences were small.

"Certainly the vast majority of 37-weekers and 41-weekers would end up developing typically," said Kimberly Noble, the lead author on the study from Columbia University Medical Center and New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Still, until more research is done, she said, "we would urge caution to both parents and physicians when considering early elective delivery."

Noble and her colleagues compared birth records and third-grade standardized test scores for 128,000 children born in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s who went to citywide public schools. All of them had been born between 37 and 41 weeks' gestation.

On both reading and math exams, where a score of 50 was considered average, kids born at 41 weeks scored about one point higher, in general, than those born at 37 weeks.

That's equivalent to about a 1.5 point difference on an IQ test, Noble said.

"That would not be a difference that would likely be noticeable from one child to the next," she told Reuters Health. "Where it is more noticeable is on the lower end of the (test score) distribution."

For example, children born at 37 weeks were 23 percent more likely to have at least moderate reading impairment, and 19 percent more likely to have moderate math impairment, than those born on the late end of the term range.

Noble said the finding doesn't prove that being born early-term can slow kids' brain development and hurt their academic achievement, since it's possible that other factors are related both to early births and academic difficulties.

Marie McCormick, a maternal and child health researcher from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, agreed that was one limitation of the study.

"Even if it's an early term delivery, there may have been something going on that led to that child being born earlier in the process than later," she said.

Still, the findings are consistent with some previous research suggesting that babies born at 37 or 38 weeks may be different from those born slightly later, she added.

The researchers agreed that although the findings shouldn't be too concerning, they are something to consider for women who have some control over when their babies will be born, such as those scheduling a cesarean section.

"The main thing is ... when you're coming to the discussion about delivery and if you have a decision about the timing of that delivery, to really make sure that you're as far along in pregnancy as you can get without getting out of the range of normal," McCormick said.

source: interaksyon.com

Stroke risk lower among women who drink moderately - study

Women who drink up to seven glasses of wine or beer a week are slightly less likely to suffer a stroke than those who steer clear of alcohol, according to a U.S. study that covered thousands of women for nearly 30 years.

The results, published in the journal Stroke, fall in line with guidelines from the American Heart Association that recommend women have no more than one drink a day -- but that doesn't mean people should take up drinking to stave off strokes, researchers said.

"We do not encourage women who do not currently drink to initiate drinking," said Monik Jimenez, a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, who led the study.

"Alcohol is a double-edged sword, because higher levels can increase high blood pressure and atrial fibrillation, which are risk factors for stroke as well," she told Reuters Health.

Several previous reports have shown that low levels of alcohol drinking are tied to a smaller chance of having a stroke.

Jimenez and her colleagues used data from the massive Nurses' Health Study, which tracked the health, diet and lifestyle of more than 83,000 middle-aged women for 26 years.

They compared the drinking habits of women in the study who had had a stroke, to women who hadn't, dividing the women into five categories: from those who never drank, to the heaviest drinkers who had at least two and a half beers or two shots' worth of hard liquor or about three glasses of wine a day.

Of the roughly 25,000 women who never drank, about four percent had a stroke at some point during the study.

In contrast, two percent of the more than 29,000 women who had up to half a drink a day on average had a stroke. And of those downing between a half glass and a full glass daily, just one in 200 ended up suffering a stroke.

After the researchers took into account certain risk factors for stroke, such as smoking, being overweight and a history of heart disease, they found that having up to one drink a day was linked to a 17 to 21 percent lower chance of having a stroke.

The study didn't prove that alcohol prevented the strokes, and there's no known explanation for the relationship between the two.

It may have something to do with socioeconomic status, said Cheryl Bushnell of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who was not involved in the study and noted that lower socioeconomic status is known to be linked with a higher risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.

"My thought is that alcohol costs money. And I think that people who may be drinking light to moderate amounts with a meal are basically people who may have slightly higher means to buy that," Bushnell told Reuters Health.

"It's something that's a lifestyle."

But she did say that it's possible alcohol itself is responsible for the lower stroke risk. Jimenez suggested that alcohol might do so by preventing blood clots or altering cholesterol levels.

Her study did not show an increased risk of stroke among the women who drank the most, but other research has suggested that possibility. One found that having several drinks was actually linked to an increased risk of stroke in the next 24 hours.

source: interaksyon.com