MONDAY, March 5 (HealthDay News) -- Girls born weighing less than 5.5 pounds may be more likely to develop depression during adolescence than their counterparts who were born at normal weight, researchers report in the March issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry. The findings do not appear to be the same in boys.
Elizabeth Jane Costello, Ph.D., of Duke University Medical School in Durham, N.C., and colleagues examined whether low birth weight predicts depression in adolescents, including 1,420 participants, aged 9 to 16, of whom 49 percent were female.
The investigators found that 5.7 percent of the girls were born weighing less than 5.5 pounds. Of these, 38.1 percent experienced at least one episode of depression between the ages of 13 to 16. By contrast, 8.4 percent of girls born at normal weight had a bout of depression when they were aged 13 to 16. The population-attributable risk for adolescent depression associated with low birth weight in girls was 18 percent. Low birth weight did not predict any other psychiatric conditions in boys or girls.
While more confirmatory studies are needed, "the findings suggest that pediatricians and parents of girls who were of low birth weight should pay close attention to their mental health as they enter puberty," the researchers conclude.
Abstract
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