Sex Differences in Mortality and Morbidity of Infants Born at Less Than 30 Weeks' Gestation

Abstract

Objective: To examine whether changes in mortality and morbidities have benefited male more than female infants.

Methods: Infants of gestational ages 22 to 29 weeks born between January 2006 and December 2016 at a Vermont Oxford Network center in the United States were studied. We examined mortality and morbidity rate differences and 95% confidence intervals by sex and birth year. We tested temporal differences in mortality and morbidity rates between boys and girls by means of a likelihood ratio test (LRT) on nested binomial regression models with log links.

Results: A total of 205 750 infants were studied; 97 048 (47.2%) infants were girls. The rate for mortality and chronic lung disease decreased over time faster for boys than for girls (LRT P < .001 for mortality; P = .006 for lung disease). Restricting to centers that remained throughout the entire study period did not change all the above but additionally revealed a significant year-sex interaction for respiratory distress syndrome, with a faster decline among boys (LRT P = .04). Morbidities, including patent ductus arteriosus, necrotizing enterocolitis, early-onset sepsis, late-onset sepsis, severe intraventricular hemorrhage, severe retinopathy of prematurity, and pneumothorax, revealed a constant rate difference between boys and girls over time.

Conclusions: Compared with girls, male infants born at <30 weeks' gestation experienced faster declines in mortality, respiratory distress syndrome, and chronic lung disease over an 11-year period. Future research should investigate which causes of death declined among boys and whether their improved survival has been accompanied by a change in their neurodevelopmental impairment rate.