Premature birth stress lasts into adulthood

PROVIDENCE, R.I., June 17 (UPI) -- Infants born prematurely are less healthy, have more social and school struggles, and face more risk of heart-health problems as adults, U.S. researchers say.

Mary C. Sullivan, a professor of nursing of the University of Rhode Island, and of Women and Infants Hospital and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University in Providence, R.I., and colleagues studied babies born prematurely at Women and Infants Hospital who are now 23 years old.

The preliminary findings include:

-- Male gender and birth weight affect early adult pulmonary function.

-- The poorest pulmonary outcomes and higher resting blood pressure were for those born at extremely low-birth weight.

-- Data from the group age 17 revealed physical health, growth and subtle neurological outcomes were poorer in the preterm groups.

-- Infants with medical and neurological impacts had a 24 percent to 32 percent increase in acute and chronic health conditions.

-- Continued monitoring of adults born prematurely is warranted, not only during young adulthood but as they reach middle age.

-- Children who were born preterm have a persistent drive to succeed.

Sullivan's work is based on the "fetal origins hypothesis," which states that the stress response of pre-term infants, called the hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axis, is a mechanism underlying fetal origins of adult chronic diseases.

Cardiologist Jim Zeigler, the study's co-investigator, is scheduled to present the findings at the 27th Congress meeting of the European Group of Pediatric Work Physiology at the University of Exeter in England in September.