Lower birth weight linked to poorer mental abilities

Lower birth weight linked to poorer mental abilities
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

FEB 26: Children born underweight have poorer mental skills than those who were born with a normal weight, and this difference continues into early adulthood, British researchers suggest.

They looked through one of the world's biggest and longest-running surveys -- a study of thousands of British men and women who were born during one week in 1946, and whose health and cognitive abilities have been measured ever since, at the ages of eight, 11, 15, 26 and 43.

Low-birth-weight children tested at the age of eight performed more than a third worse than normal-weight peers in reading, pronunciation vocabulary and non-verbal skills.

Factors such as sex, social class and parents' education were taken into account in a bid to make a fair comparison on the basis of physiology.

The link between birth weight and cognitive ability persisted through the teenage years and into early adulthood, reflected by a similar gap in educational success, the researchers say.

However, by the age of 43, birth weight "had no significant effect" on any of the test scores, they note.

The study, published in tomorrow's issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) was conducted by the Medical Research Council (MRC) national survey of health and development, based at University College, London.