THURSDAY, June 8 (HealthDay News) -- Children who are born prematurely or with a low birth weight are more likely to develop hyperkinetic disorder and have concentration problems than other children, according to a study published online June 5 in the Archives of Disease in Childhood.
Karen M. Linnet, M.D., of the Aarhus University Hospital in Aarhus, Denmark, and colleagues conducted a case-control study of 834 cases of hyperkinetic disorder and 20,100 controls, and found that children born at 34 to 36 weeks had a 70 percent higher risk of developing the condition compared with their counterparts born at term. The risk for infants born before 34 weeks was almost threefold higher.
Children born at term with a birth weight between 1,500 g to 2,499 g had a 90 percent higher risk of hyperkinetic disorder compared with full-term infants with a higher birth weight. Children who weighed between 2,500 g and 2,999 g at birth had a 50 percent higher risk of developing hyperkinetic disorder.
"Animal studies show that undernutrition in critical fetal periods during brain development may have long-term effects on the brain, affecting attention, learning and memory. Our results support this hypothesis," the authors write. "Since we have now shown an association between gestational age and birth weight and hyperkinetic disorder, it could be interesting to investigate some of the complications more closely related to gestational age and birth weight."
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