Young adults with a very low birth weight have higher indexes of insulin resistance and glucose intolerance and higher blood pressure than those born at term.

Rather than very low birth weight per se, intrauterine growth retardation, as reflected by small for gestational age status in the very-low-birth-weight subjects, confers a risk for behavioral and emotional adversity related to ADHD in young adulthood.

Petteri Hovi and colleagues evaluate skeletal health in 144 adults born preterm with very low birth weight and show that as adults these individuals have significantly lower bone mineral density than do their term-born peers.