Newborn test may help detect teenage school trouble

Updated on: Saturday, July 23, 2011

The health test conducted on babies minutes after they are born may help detect whether a child will have trouble in school as a teenager, a new study has claimed.

Swedish researchers looked at 877,000 children and compared their school grades and graduation rates when they were teenagers with their Apgar scores and post-birth health.

The Apgar test, which was devised in 1952 by American paediatric anaesthesiologist Dr Virginia Apgar, is a 10-point scale, and much research has shown that it reliably predicts how much medical care a newborn will need.

The new study, published in the August issue of the journal Obstetrics & Gynaecology, found that there is a strong relationship between having an Apgar score below seven and having cognitive deficits later in life.

Better understanding the relationship may provide insights into what early problems might cause those deficits, the researcher said.

"It is not the Apgar score in itself that leads to lower cognitive abilities," study author Dr Andrea Stuart, an obstetrician at Central Hospital in Helsingborg, said.

"It is the reasons leading to a low Apgar score (including asphyxiation, preterm delivery, maternal drug use, infections) that might have an impact on future brain function," Dr Stuart was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

Apgar tests are given at one and five minutes after birth, and they evaluate an infant's heart rate, breathing, muscle tone, skin colour and reflex irritability (sneezing or coughing in response to the bulb used to drain mucus from the nose), each on a two-point scale. Scores of eight and above are considered to be signs of good health.

The Swedish study found that children with Apgar scores below seven had roughly double the odds of attending a special school because of cognitive deficits or other difficulties.

However, the researchers noted that only one in 44 babies with those low Apgar scores required special education, so mothers of babies who had low Apgar scores need not be overly concerned.

"Most babies who have Apgar scores of seven or less do perfectly fine," said Dr Richard Polin, of neonatology at Columbia University Medical Centre and a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Foetus and Newborn.

"It is important that the children born with a low Apgar score are not stigmatised or treated differently than their peers due to the low Apgar score per se," she said.

She explained that while tests might indicate how many teens in a large group would be expected to have deficits, the Apgar score would not help predict whether an inpidual child might have a learning disability.

Newborn test may help detect teenage school trouble

More Education news