Relationship between threatened abortion and the level of intellectual development in children

Deqing TAO; Heng WU; Weiqiong LIAO

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND:

Threatened abortion is a high risk pathological change during gestation. Fetus usually could be protected after the application of all kinds of medical interventions; however, whether the healthy development of the newborn could be assured simultaneously when a new life is protected?Especially the long-term impact on the normal development of the intelligence is an important issue deserving investigation.

OBJECTIVE:

To investigate the differences of intelligence level between protected fetus after threatened abortion and normal mature fetus, and the influencing factors.

DESIGN:

A case-controlled observational comparative study introducing children as the subjects.SETTINGS Psychological department of a normal university; Department of gynecology and pediatrics of a district women and children' s health care hospital.

PARTICIPANTS:

Totally 170 children(mature and natural delivery after protection) of 5 to 7 years old, whose mothers experienced threatened abortions during gestation, and 182 children born in the same period(normal mature and natural delivery) of 5 to 7 years old, whose mothers did not have threatened abortion history were selected as the subjects. No other factors would affect the intellectual development in the subjects of both groups.

INTERVENTIONS:

The Chinese Version of Wechsler young children scale of intelligence(C-WYCSI) for children below 6 years old or Wechsler intelligence scale for children-Chinese revision( WISC-CR ) for children no younger than 6 years old were introduced in the individual test performed by trained psychological junior students for every testee.children in both groups [intelligence quotient(IQ) gained in the intelligence of mother on the intellectual development of the children in both groups.was found in the testees, the IQ of all tested children was within the normal dren was sinificantly lower in the threatened abortion group than in the normal were significant interactions between threatened abortion and gender, body mass at birth and the pregnant age of mother, etc. if the mother experienced threatened abortion, the newborn would be even more easily to suffer from relative low body mass at birth(low body mass fetus accounted for 28% of threatened abortion group, which accounted for about 66% of the total low body mass at birth fetuses in our study); the male newborn would be even more easily to have relative low intellectual development(the difference of IQ between the male children of two groups was significant) (F = 2. 809, P < 0.05). Especially, the negative impact on children' s intellectual development would be even greater if the pregnant woman were older than 35 years old and had threatened abortion experience(the average IQ of 32 tested children was 86).

CONCLUSION:

Threatened abortion might be a potential innate factor that would affect the intellectual development of the children. For those high-risk individual cases with this kind of experience, early intervention should be prepared as early as possible to create a favorable substantial and culture environment for avoiding the actual occurrence of delayed intelligence.