Weight for Gestational Age Affects the Mortality of Late Preterm Infants

Abstract

Being SGA substantially increases the already higher mortality of late preterm and early term newborns. This increased risk cannot be fully explained by an increased prevalence of lethal congenital conditions among SGA late preterm newborns. Clinicians caring for late preterm and early term newborns should be cognizant of their WGA category.

Lung Function at 8 and 16 Years After Moderate-to-Late Preterm Birth: A Prospective Cohort Study

“…Quality control was performed at the time of examination by visual inspection of the waveforms. Given that coherence, which is a measure of testing reliability, was >0.80 at 10 Hz, the mean value of resistance at 5 Hz (R 5 ), resistance at 20 Hz (R 20 ), frequency dependence of resistance (ie, R [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20], and reactance area (AX) were used for analysis. AX may boost the assessed response inappropriately compared with the R 5-20 response because it multiplies 2 partly independent reactions of the airways.…”

“…3,4 Available studies on moderate to late prematurity in relation to airway obstruction in infants and toddlers report increased respiratory morbidity during early childhood. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11] Few studies are available on lung function at school age and adolescence in this group, however, and the results are somewhat conflicting. 12,13 Furthermore, although spirometry is a well-established method to assess lung function by measuring expiratory flow rates and volumes, other lung function techniques aiming to assess peripheral airway function and mechanics, such as forced oscillation, have been shown to be more sensitive than spirometry for detection of airway obstruction in children with lung disease, including follow-up studies of children born very preterm.…”

Impaired NK cell antiviral cytokine response against influenza virus in small-for-gestational-age neonates

“…2 Intrauterine growth retardation creates an adverse intrauterine environment to the fetus, which leads to retarded development in organs including the immune system. 18,19 The SGA neonates are highly susceptible to lifethreatening infection with a high rate of perinatal morbidity and mortality due to their juvenility of adaptive and innate immune system.…”

“…18,19 The SGA neonates are highly susceptible to lifethreatening infection with a high rate of perinatal morbidity and mortality due to their juvenility of adaptive and innate immune system. 2,3 A series of studies have already showed the impaired adaptive immunity in SGA neonates. 18,[20][21][22][23][24][25] Innate immune system plays an important role during the first month after birth.…”

“…1 The susceptibility to various infection is thought to be caused by immaturity of the innate immunity, which is dependent on gestational age and birth weight. 2,3 The innate immune system mount an efficient antiviral response in the early life, which includes monocytes, phagocytes, natural killer (NK) cells, Vc9Vd2-T cells and other recognition and effector elements. 4 NK cells are key effector cells in the innate immunity, which play a critical role in the first line of host defense against acute viral infections by directly killing infected cells and inhibiting virus replication through secretion of antiviral cytokines.…”