Prematurely born children show differences in white matter microstructure from control children at 12 years of age, according to a report in the February issue of Pediatrics.

Prematurely born children show differences in white matter microstructure from control children at 12 years of age, according to a report in the February issue of Pediatrics.

Prematurely born children are known to have macrostructural and functional cerebral differences that persist at 12 years of age, the authors explain, but the long-term effects of premature delivery on neural connectivity remain unclear.

Dr. R. Todd Constable from Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, Connecticut and colleagues used diffusion tensor imaging to compare 29 12-year-olds born prematurely without neonatal brain injury and 22 matched full-term control children.

Among other things, diffusion tensor imaging measures fractional anisotropy (FA), which allows inferences about fiber tract organization and has been shown to increase with increasing gestational age.

FA values were significantly lower in several brain regions in prematurely born children than in control children. Preterm boys had lower FA values than preterm girls, but term boys had higher FA values than preterm or term girls.

FA values in the left anterior uncinate fasciculus and in the right anterior uncinate fasciculus were positively correlated with language measures in preterm boys but negatively correlated with verbal IQ in preterm girls, the investigators note.

Also, the researchers report, several brain regions were significantly lower in volume in prematurely born children compared with controls, with the changes more marked for boys than for girls.

"These studies...suggest that preterm birth results in significant, long-term, cerebral microstructural changes in children with no known evidence of intraventricular hemorrhage or cystic white matter injury in the newborn period," the authors conclude.

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