Long-term effects of neonatal hypoglycemia on brain growth and psychomotor development in small-for-gestational-age preterm infants☆,☆☆
Section snippets
Population
From a population of preterm infants being studied for long-term outcome, we selected retrospectively a group born prematurely and SGA with similar antenatal, perinatal, and sociodemographic risk factors. Infants with blood glucose levels <2.6 mmol/L (47 mg/dL) were compared with those who remained euglycemic for physical growth parameters and psychometric tests obtained prospectively. The 85 babies with birth weights below the 10th percentile2 and preterm (≤34 weeks) were born between March
Incidence of Hypoglycemia
The incidence of hypoglycemia in the population of SGA preterm infants was 73% (62 of 85). The other 27% (23 of 85) children were considered to have been euglycemic and constituted our control population. Within the cohort of hypoglycemic neonates, 58% (36 of 62) had serious hypoglycemia (>0.6 to 1.6 mmol/L, >11 to 29 mg/dL), and 21% (13 of 62) had severe episodes (≤0.6 mmol/L, ≤11 mg/dL). Fig 1 shows the recurrence of hypoglycemia within each of the cutoff limits.
DISCUSSION
Prematurity and intrauterine growth retardation are risk factors associated with an increased frequency of hypoglycemia, demonstrating the difficulty in adapting to extrauterine life for these infants with deficient glycogen stores. We found that hypoglycemia in SGA infants was far more common than reported previously.23 Studies of the incidence of hypoglycemia differ greatly depending on the population. For term infants hypoglycemia varies from 0.7% to 11.4%.23, 24 Increased incidences of
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Early neonatal hypoglycemia in term and late preterm small for gestational age newborns
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2021, Seminars in Fetal and Neonatal Medicine
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Reprint requests: J.-M. Matthieu, Service de Pédiatrie, Clinique Infantile, CHUV, CH-1011 Lausanne, Switzerland.
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