Premature babies have fewer fractures in childhood than others: Study

According to a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland and Kuopio University Hospital, pre-term and low-birth-weight newborns have fewer fractures in childhood than full-term and normal-weight newborns. Data from the National Medical Birth Register, the Care Register for Health Care and Statistics Finland were used in the Finnish register-based cohort study. The study included data from one million children and more than 100,000 fractures.

Babies born prematurely or with very low birth weight are known to be at risk of metabolic bone disease of prematurity, as the accumulation of minerals in the fetus occurs mainly in the third trimester of pregnancy. Some earlier small studies have also reported an increased risk of fractures in childhood in children born pre-term.

In addition, an earlier study from Finland found that pre-term infants also have low bone mineral density in adulthood. “With this in mind, we set out to investigate whether pre-term and low-birth-weight babies have an increased risk of fractures in childhood compared to full-term and normal-birth babies,” Eastern said. said Ilari Kuitunen, assistant professor at the University of Finland.

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The researchers found that pre-term and low birth weight babies had significantly fewer fractures in childhood than other newborns. The difference was especially evident among children born before the 32nd week of pregnancy, who had 23% fewer fractures than children born full-term. There were also fewer fractures in the group whose birth weight was less than 2,500 grams, and especially in the group whose birth weight was less than 1,000 grams.

“It may be concluded that the risk of childhood fractures is explained by factors other than the effect of being pre-term on bones. However, we do know that pre-term children are less likely to participate in sports and they also have less risk-behaving adults than full-term babies,” Kuitunen said.

According to the researchers, further research is needed on whether fetal growth disorder, that is, abnormal growth in relation to weeks of pregnancy, is associated with fractures in childhood, as this was not addressed in the current study.

The study was published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research. The research group also included Professor Rijo Sund and Assistant Professor Ulla Sankilampi.