14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new scientific study, infants who are born prematurely have a much higher chance of developing autism during childhood than those born on term. Doctors say that the longer the baby remains in the mother's womb, the more the chances for the terrible disease decrease. For these results, scientists from the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) and the Boston Medical Center (BMC) collaborated with numerous other research centers around the country. The team published their finds in the January issue of the Journal of Pediatrics.
The American Academy of Pediatrics' Council on Children with Disabilities announced that it advised physicians to administer various autism spectrum disorder (ASD) tests to prematurely-born children who are susceptible to developing the disease. According to the Boston-based team, infants born earlier have a three times increased risk of developing the condition, as registered by the modified checklist for autism in toddlers (M-CHAT) test.
To thoroughly found their results, the experts analyzed the cases of 1,500 children, born at least 3 months ahead of term. They asked parents or caregivers to rate 23 behaviors the children exhibited. If three items on the M-CHAT test were ticked, or if two from a special six-item category were checked, then the child was at risk of developing autism. The team analyzed some 1,000 returned forms, and then returned to study the same batch two years later, to check on the kids' progresses.
They learned that a part of the positive scores on the test were actually owed to various physical handicaps, which parents or caregivers mistakenly took for autism. "However, in our study, even after excluding those children with motor, vision and hearing impairments, we still found 16 percent screened positive," explains Karl Kuban, MD, SMEpi, the lead author of the new study, and a BUSM professor of pediatrics and neurology. The expert is also the chief of the Division of Pediatric Neurology at BMC.
"Because we have not yet determined if those who screened positive satisfy criteria for an ASD, we cannot yet assess the predictive values of the M-CHAT among children born at extremely low gestational ages," he concludes.