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• Re: Weight growth in infants born preterm. An open issue.
  Tim J Cole
  Published on: 22 March 2016
• Weight growth in infants born preterm. An open issue.
  Enrico Bertino
  Published on: 22 March 2016

• Published on: 22 March 2016

  Re: Weight growth in infants born preterm. An open issue.

  • Tim J Cole
  • Other Contributors:
    • Yevgeniy Statnikov, Shalini Santhakumaran, Huiqi Pan and Neena Modi

  Sir, we thank Professor Bertino and his colleagues for their interest in our paper. We too were struck by the existence of a peak in relative weight velocity (g/kg/d) at 30-35 weeks postmenstrual age. It is striking that the timing of the peak is broadly the same irrespective of gestation - neonates born at 23 weeks take 10 weeks or so to reach peak velocity, whereas those born at 31 weeks reach their peak in only 2-3 wee...

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  Sir, we thank Professor Bertino and his colleagues for their interest in our paper. We too were struck by the existence of a peak in relative weight velocity (g/kg/d) at 30-35 weeks postmenstrual age. It is striking that the timing of the peak is broadly the same irrespective of gestation - neonates born at 23 weeks take 10 weeks or so to reach peak velocity, whereas those born at 31 weeks reach their peak in only 2-3 weeks. Of course these are average figures, and individuals vary considerably in their age at peak velocity, and this may be a risk factor for later adverse outcomes over and above their gestational age.

  T J Cole and H Pan Centre for Paediatric Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UCL Institute of Child Health, London, UK

  Y Statnikov, S Santhakumaran and N Modi Imperial College London, Section of Neonatal Medicine, London, UK

  Conflict of Interest:

  None declared

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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• Published on: 22 March 2016

  Weight growth in infants born preterm. An open issue.

  • Enrico Bertino, neonatologist
  • Other Contributors:
    • Silvano Milani, Elena Spada

  Enrico Bertino (1), Silvano Milani (2), Elena Spada (2)

  (1). Department of Public and Pediatric Health Sciences - Neonatal Unit, Universita' degli Studi di Torino (2). Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health - Unit of Medical Statistics & Biometry, Universita' degli Studi di Milano

  Sir, we have read with great interest the paper by Cole et al. (1) on the longitudinal growth in infants bo...

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  Enrico Bertino (1), Silvano Milani (2), Elena Spada (2)

  (1). Department of Public and Pediatric Health Sciences - Neonatal Unit, Universita' degli Studi di Torino (2). Department of Clinical Sciences and Community Health - Unit of Medical Statistics & Biometry, Universita' degli Studi di Milano

  Sir, we have read with great interest the paper by Cole et al. (1) on the longitudinal growth in infants born below 32 weeks of gestation. It raises a current and essential problem that neonatologists and paediatricians take on daily: how to evaluate somatic growth in preterm- born infants and children. Cole et al. describe postnatal weight growth of preterm neonates, analysing a very large number infants. They observe that the weight gain of the mean growth curve peaks at about 16 g/kg/d at 32 weeks and falls to about 8 g/kg/d at 42 weeks, i.e. about 4 and 14 weeks after birth, mean gestational age at birth being 28.14 weeks (as can be derived from table 1 in their paper). We reported analogous results in a paper which described the growth of 262 very low birth weight infants between birth and two years of age (2). In particular, we also noticed that growth rate presents an early peak (17.9 g/kg/d) at 3 weeks after birth, and falls to 10 g/kg/d at 14 weeks. These findings were based on a much lower number of neonates (262, instead of 5009) selected according to a different criterion of inclusion (birth weight below 1,500 g, instead of gestational age below 32 weeks), and on a quite different approach to model individual growth shape and trace median growth curve. This seems to confirm that the peak in growth rate, observed in both studies a few weeks after birth in preterm babies, is a fact, not an artifact due to the methods used to analyze data. We are grateful to Cole et al. for their important contribution which clearly shows the pattern of postnatal growth in preterm neonates. We hope that further studies may shed light on the biological mechanisms that control postnatal weight gain in preterm and term babies.

  1. Cole TJ, Statnikov Y, Santhakumaran S, Pan H, Modi N; on behalf of the Neonatal Data Analysis Unit and the Preterm Growth Investigator Group. Birth weight and longitudinal growth in infants born below 32 weeks' gestation: a UK population study. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2013, Epub ahead of print. 2. Bertino E, Coscia A, Mombro' M, Boni L, Rossetti G, Fabris C, Spada E, Milani S. Postnatal weight increase and growth velocity of very low birthweight infants. Arch Dis Child Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2006, 91:F349-56

  Conflict of Interest:

  None declared

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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