Girls and Boys Born before 28 Weeks Gestation: Risks of Cognitive, Behavioral, and Neurologic Outcomes at Age 10 Years

Karl C K Kuban, Robert M Joseph, Thomas M O’Shea, Elizabeth N Allred, Timothy Heeren, Laurie Douglass, Carl E Stafstrom, Hernan Jara, Jean A Frazier, Deborah Hirtz, Alan Leviton, Extremely Low Gestational Age Newborn (ELGAN) Study Investigators

J Pediatr. 2016 Jun;173:69-75.e1. doi: 10.1016/j.jpeds.2016.02.048. Epub 2016 Mar 19.

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28% of boys (446) and 21% of girls (428) exhibited moderate to severe impairment on summary measures of cognitive abilities. Boys had a higher prevalence of impairment than girls in nearly all measures of cognition, were more than twice as likely to have microcephaly (15% in boys, 8% in girls), and require more often assistive devices to ambulate (6% in boys, 4% in girls). In contrast, boys and girls had comparable risk for a history of seizure (in 10% of the cohort) or epilepsy (in 7% of the cohort). The boy-to-girl ratio of ASD (9% in boys, 5% in girls) was lower than expected compared with the overall US autism population.

ELGAN