Premature Birth And Adult IQ: At Age Two, Researchers Can Predict Future Brainpower

So much of a child's future is in the hands of various environmental factors as he or she develops. Yet some things, too, are already set in stone.

New findings published in the journal Pediatrics reveal that adult IQ (intelligence quotient) of children who were born prematurely or with a very low birth weight can be predicted from the time the child is a toddler.

"We believe this is the first time a research paper has looked into the prediction of the IQ of adults over the age of 26 who were born very premature or with very low birth weight," Professor Dieter Wolke, who led the study, said in a statement. "The results indicate that assessing two year olds who were born very preterm or very underweight and will provide a reasonably good prediction to what their adult IQ will be."

For this study, researchers at the University of Warwick followed close to 500 children from birth to adulthood who were born between 1985 and 1986. They completed both developmental and intelligence quotient tests (IQ) at five and 20 months, as well as four, six, eight and 26 years of age. Two-hundred-and-sixty babies born either very premature (before 32 weeks) or with very low birth weight (fewer than 1.5kgs) were compared with 229 babies who born full-term. The study results were not sex-specific and compared to the control group of adults who were born healthy in the same obstetric wards, with the results not sex-specific. 

"Some children born very premature or with very low birth weight score low on cognitive tests but beat the odds and improve into adulthood," Professor Wolke concluded. "However many with persistent problems can be detected in the second year of life. Early identification of cognitive problems in these children may help to plan specialised therapeutic and educational interventions to help them and their families."

Statistics from the Center's for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that roughly 8 percent of infants born in the United Sates in 2012 were at low birth weight. This can range from children less than 2,500 grams or 5.5 pounds. Very low birth weight would be less than 1,500 grams or 3.25 pounds. Children of low birth weight are more likely to die in their first year of life than normal birth weight children and more likely to deal with developmental problems. Women at increased risk of having low-birth weight babies may have such related factors as maternal hypertension, tobacco smoke exposure or inadequate weight gain during pregnancy.

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