Association of birthweight centiles and early childhood development of singleton infants born from 37 weeks of gestation in Scotland: A population-based cohort study

This study aims to establish the association between birthweight centiles across the whole distribution and early childhood development among children born from 37 weeks of gestation. Methods and findingsThis is a population-based cohort study of 686,284 singleton infants born from 37 weeks of gestation. The cohort was generated by linking pregnancy and delivery data from the Scottish Morbidity Records (2003 to 2015) and the child developmental assessment at age 2 to 3.5 years. The main outcomes were child ’s fine motor, gross motor, communication, and social developmental concerns measured with the Ages and Stages Questionnaires—3 (ASQ-3) and Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Social& Emotional —2 (ASQ:SE-2), and for a subset of children with additional specialist tools such as the Modified Checklist for Autism in Toddlers (M-CHAT) if the ASQ3/SE indicate these are necessary. The ASQ score for each domain was categorised as “concern” and “no concern.”We used multivariate cubic re gression splines to model the associations between birthweight centiles and early childhood developmental concerns. We used multivariate Poisson regression models, with cluster robust errors, to estimate the relative risks (RRs) of developmental concerns below and above the established thresholds. W e adjusted for maternal age, early pregnancy body mass index (BMI), parity, year of delivery, gestational age at delivery, smoking history, substance misuse in pregnancy, alcohol intake, ethnic...
Source: PLoS Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Source Type: research