Fetal growth restriction (FGR) increases the already substantial risk of prematurity for infants' survival, overall function and later learning competence. Of the 12% of prematurely born infants in the US each year, more than 5% failed to grow appropriately in the womb due to placental insufficiency. These infants present immediate significant challenges to Newborn Intensive Care Units (NICU); more than 70% will go on to develop learning disabilities and require special educational services. It is postulated that the NICU's stressful environment may exacerbate the FGR infant's low threshold of reactivity and jeopardize already compromised brain development. The proposed project will test the effectiveness of an in-NICU intervention for such infants. It will consist of efforts to individualize all care to the infant's thresholds of sensitivity and to thereby improve neural fiber tract development (MRI) and neurophysiologic functioning (EEG). This in turn is expected to result in better behavioral adaptations. Thirty FGR preterm infants will be randomized to either a Developmental Care (E) or Standard Care (C) group. All infants will be studied within 7 days of birth (baseline) and again at 2 weeks corrected age (2w CA) (outcome). The FGR-E group is expected to show better development at 2w CA in the 3 domains to be tested, neurobehavior, electrophysiology, and brain structure. Furthermore, the FGR infants will be compared to a sample of appropriate in growth for gestational age (AGA) preterm infants for whom comparable data are available at both age points from a previous study. The FGR and AGA C and E groups will be compared in order to identify sample specific aspects of the intervention effects. This might lead to better understanding of the intervention's interaction with sample specific risk factors. The relationship and predictive success will be examined among background variables, intervention, and outcomes in the respective domains. Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance by domain will be employed to assess sample, group and time effects as well as their interactions. Discriminate function analysis, canonical correlation, multiple regression as well as path analysis will be employed in order to model domain and across age relationships, and to predict intervention effectiveness. Results are expected to show brain-based effects of the intervention for the FGR infants, mediated by stress reduction. This is expected to bring them closer in functioning and brain structural development to their AGA peers. The study will be significant in understanding ways to reduce long-term functional morbidities in FGR infants, as well as in identifying opportunities for enhancing last trimester brain development.
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