Premature babies generally become healthy adults

Main Category: Public Health
Article Date: 28 Mar 2004 - 0:00 PDT

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Premature babies often have social problems in their teens. The good news is that they tend to have normal adulthoods, at least early adulthoods - beyond that researchers do not know yet, but they will eventually, as their study is ongoing.

In the UK, Dr. Richard Cooke, Liverpool Women's Hospital, UK, has been monitoring the development of low birth weight babies since the beginning of the 1980s. He did not include in his study babies that became so disabled that they were unable to go to mainstream schools.

Dr. Cooke had said in the past that premature babies tend to fare worse at school than other kids (kids born with normal weight). He had also noted that premature babies tended to become teenagers with social and behavioural problems; they would have more difficulty in making friends, among other things.

He then said that he imagined these kids would go on to have problems when they became adults. Fortunately, this does not seem to be the case.

You can read about his study in the March issue of Archives of Diseases in Childhood.

His results come from questionnaires he gave to young adults aged 19-22. He found that normal weight babies and low weight babies had similar quality of life during early adulthood.

Dr. Cooke said "Despite some differences in achievement and health, the perceived quality of life was similar in the two groups, which is an optimistic outlook for parents and health professionals."

There was a bit more asthma among the adults who were low weight babies. The adults who weighed less than normal when they were born tended to be shorter and weighed less than other adults. On the other hand, they had normal social relationships. Their chances of having a boyfriend/girlfriend was no different from other people's. Their sex lives were similar (whether they were sexually active or not).

Socially, there was no difference in the 19-22 age-group. Academically, they were a bit behind the others. Only half as many were in higher education. However, more of them were in vocational training.

Cooke added that his study did not involve face-to-face interviews, but only questionnaires. This could be viewed as a limitation in the study.

He plans to contact them again when they are nearly thirty years old.

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