It has been forever since my last blog post due to my intense study and then intense resting and relaxation, but now I am back. I recently read an article about low birth weight and how it can be related to attention disorders. In fact, its not only attention problems but low birth weight is showing some relationship to other psychiatric problems such as aggression and anxiety through out the childhood years.
The Department of Epidemiology at Michigan State University College of Human Medicine designed the study and their conclusions are quite interesting. They used records from two very different areas of the state. One area was a middle class suburb and the other area was an inner city vastly populated community. The conclusions are quite interesting. It turns out that even though there is a correlation between low birth weight and ADHD, there is a 3x higher rate of the problem among children from the urban area. This is likely due in large to the discrepancy seen with respect to the socioeconomic status between the two areas. It is quite reasonable to suspect that these psychiatric problems of low birth weight individuals is a symptom with a disease that runs much deeper.
Prenatal care for the lower socioeconomic class has most probably declined as we have seen the rapid decline of persons with health insurance. This could be another result of a failing public health system that does not guarantee a reduce in or atleast alleviate the descrepancy observed among financially stable and financially unstable citizens.
The full article can be accessed at
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/580123
The Abstract can be accessed at
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18762594?dopt=Abstract
Part 3
15 years ago
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