Quicker Infant Growth Tied to Higher IQ Later

But difference in scores was fairly small in study of full-term babies

By Serena Gordon

HealthDay Reporter

FRIDAY, June 21 (HealthDay News) -- Babies who gained weight and head circumference more rapidly during the first month of life scored slightly higher on intelligence tests when they were 6 years old, according to a large new study.

But a baby's early rate of growth didn't influence the child's behavior later in life, according to the study.

"We found that faster growth in the first four weeks following birth was linked to a small increase in intelligence quotient scores at 6.5 years, but there were no clear effects on children's behavior," said the study's lead author, Lisa Smithers, a postdoctoral research fellow in early life nutrition at the University of Adelaide, in Australia.

She added that these findings suggest that "it is important that parents seek help for any concerns they might have about their baby's growth or feeding quite quickly so that any problems can be addressed early."

"[However], we cannot say that faster growth causes a higher IQ," Smithers said. "It is possible that a phenomenon called 'reverse causality' may be at play, for example, if children with lower IQs had poorer growth."

The study results appeared online June 17 and in the July print issue of the journal Pediatrics.

The study included about 17,000 mothers and their babies from Belarus. Only mothers who delivered a single, healthy baby were included in the study. In addition, the babies were all born at or after 37 weeks of gestation.

Researchers measured the babies' weights and head circumferences over the first four weeks of life. Intelligence was measured using several IQ scales that were combined to yield a full-scale IQ score at 6.5 years. The full-scale IQ scores can range from 50 to 150, Smithers said, and the average score is 100. To assess behavior, parents and teachers completed behavior questionnaires.

Babies with the highest growth in weight and head circumference scored 1.5 points higher on the IQ scale compared to babies with the lowest growth. The researchers found no statistically significant differences in children's later behavior based on early growth.

"Our study involved thousands of healthy babies, so our findings reflect a wide range of growth patterns that might be expected within a healthy population," Smithers said.

Researchers accounted for other important factors, such as family income and parental education, in their analysis.

"The size of the effect we found on children's IQ would not be noticeable to individuals," Smithers said.

But the results may be important in the bigger picture, a U.S. expert said.

"A 1.5-point difference would be meaningless in an individual child and that child's success in life, but on a population level, such a difference may matter," said Dr. Lisa Thornton, medical director of pediatric rehabilitation at LaRabida Children's Hospital in Chicago.

View the original article here