Positive Outlook for Premature Babies
Report on Adults Who Were Preemies Contradicts Expectations

A new study suggests that infants born premature have lower rates of pregnancy and drug and alcohol use as young adults. Photo: Courtesy Neonatology on the Web

Jan. 16, 2002 -- Being born too soon and too small was once a nearly automatic death sentence for American babies. But a study in this week's New England Journal of Medicine offers the first analysis of adults who were preemies at the dawn of neonatal intensive care. For All Things Considered, NPR's Rachel Jones reports.

Researchers led by Maureen Hack, who directs the Neonatal High Risk Follow-Up program at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital in Cleveland, tracked 242 babies born between 1977 and 1979 who weighed less than 1,500 grams at birth. Researchers checked on them at ages 2, 8, and now, at age 20.

Their study suggests that though preemies may in some cases have lower IQs, their outcomes are much better in areas like social behavior and self-esteem.

Previous research has connected lower IQs with deviant and risk-taking behavior such as drug and alcohol use, so Hack's team expected to see this same pattern in the preemies they followed. Contrary to what they expected, the preemies as adults were less likely to use alcohol and drugs, and had lower teen pregnancy rates than those in the control group.

Barbara Howard, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University medical school, agrees with Hack that parental involvement may be key to the preemies' success. The parents in the study, she says, were probably more closely involved in their children's lives because of the babies' rocky start.

"It's really possible that what we're seeing is that, even though they may not have had equal educational success, they may be more successful as people in life," Howard says.

Howard says that today's medical advances may mean even brighter prospects for preemies born in 2002.

In Depth

Browse through NPR's archives for other stories about premature infants.

Other Resources

• The National Library of Medicine's MEDLINEplus section on premature infants provides research updates, statistics, clinical trial and nutrition information.

• Children's Hospital Boston provides a fact sheet on some of the causes behind premature babies, along with disorders associated with preemies and treatment options.

• Neonatology.org is a nonprofit Web site building on the resources of the neonatal intensive care unit at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, Calif.

• Get research updates at the American Academy of Pediatrics.