According to Health Imaging, an infant born prematurely with a brain injury viewable on a neonatal ultrasound may be at higher risk for developing various psychiatric disorders, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. A study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry found that preterm infants face higher risks of brain injury due to increased vascular and cellular vulnerabilities of the laminar and fetal brain. The researchers studied associations between perinatal brain injury and motor and cognitive deficits.

The study followed 1.105 preterm participants who underwent multiple neonatal ultrasounds. The low-birth-weight participants were also followed as part of the Neonatal Brain Hemorrhage Study, with follow-up lasting 16 years and including 458 eligible participants who were evaluated according to the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for children-IV. The DISC-IVP found that many participants showed a threshold of greater than 3 percent within oppositional defiant disorder, specific phobias, ADHD and social phobias. Relative to brain injuries viewed on ultrasound, participants showed increased risks for major depression, obsessive compulsive disorder and an increased risks for current ADHD-inattentive type and tic disorders. The researchers concluded that the study found strong evidence that injury to the fetal-neonatal brain alerts risk for later psychiatric disorder, said Agnes H. Whitaker, MD, co-author of the study.

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According to Newswise, the University of Adelaide researchers have found a link between the loss of a twin during early pregnancy and the increased risk of birth defects in multiple IVF pregnancies. The annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology heard from Profressor Michael Davies how the vanishing twin phenomenon has been linked to a nearly two-fold increased risk of birth defects in the surviving baby, along with a threefold increase in multiple birth defects.

The vanishing twin phenomenon occurs when there are fewer babies born than detected in early pregnancy by ultrasound, often reducing from twins to a single baby born. The University of Adelaide’s Research Centre for the Early Origins of Health and Disease said its findings have a potential of advancing the origins of congenital malformation after infertility treatment, and possibly in natural pregnancies.

The researchers say it is easier to study women undergoing fertility treatments because doctors know exactly when eggs were fertilized and transferred to a woman’s womb. The first ultrasound scans are carried out in six to eight weeks and followed by close monitoring with pregnancy tests and ultrasounds.

The study identified cases in which a fetus had been lost by comparing routine six-eight week ultrasound data which shows the presence of an empty fetal sac, and the number of actual babies delivered. The study also found that 7462 IVF babies delivered in South Australia in a 16-year period had only one twin survive, and out of those births 14.6% of babies had congenital malformations or brain injury.

Cappolino Dodd Krebs LLP. – birth trauma lawyers