BEING born prematurely isn鈥檛 the best start to life, but the detrimental effects are more prolonged than we thought. Low-birthweight babies are more likely to die in childhood, a nationwide study has shown for the first time.
The finding, from an analysis of births and deaths in England and Wales between 1993 and 2001, reinforces the message that pregnant women should avoid damaging the growth of their baby through poor diet, smoking and drug-taking.
Newborns weighing less than 2.5 kilograms are well known to fare least well immediately after birth. But Tania Corbin of the UK Office for National Statistics has shown that in the first year of life 125 premature babies die per 100,000 births, three times the normal rate for babies. Between 2 and 4 years old, that falls to 45 per 100,000, 2.5 times the usual rate. At age 7, the rate is 22 deaths per 100,000, still twice the norm.
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鈥淭he pattern persists up to age seven, and it鈥檚 the first time we鈥檝e been able to see this factor,鈥� said Corbin at a press conference on 11 November.
