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. 2005 Feb;25(2):108-13.
doi: 10.1038/sj.jp.7211219.

Maternal infection and risk of cerebral palsy in term and preterm infants

Michael D Neufeld  1 , Chantal Frigon, Alan S Graham, Beth A Mueller
Affiliations

Maternal infection and risk of cerebral palsy in term and preterm infants

Michael D Neufeld et al. J Perinatol. 2005 Feb.

Abstract

Objective: We tested the hypothesis that term and preterm infants exposed to maternal infection at the time of delivery are at increased risk of developing cerebral palsy (CP).

Study design: A population-based case-control study was conducted using Washington State birth certificate data linked to hospital discharge data. Cases (688) were children <or=6 years old, singleton births, hospitalized during 1987 to 1999 with an ICD-9 diagnosis code for CP. Controls were 3,068 singleton birth infants randomly selected from birth records for the same years without CP-related hospitalizations. Infection information was available only for the birth hospitalization.

Results: Infants of women who had any infection during their hospitalization for delivery were at increased risk of CP (odds ratio (OR) 3.1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.3 to 4.2). This was observed for term deliveries (OR 1.8, 95% CI 1.1 to 2.8) and preterm deliveries (OR 2.3, 95% CI 1.3 to 4.2).

Conclusions: Our results suggest that maternal infection is a risk factor for CP in both term and preterm infants.

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