Very Low Birth Weight Infants: Participation in leisure activity and its influence on developmental outcome.
Public Health, Healthcare Research, Social and Occupational Medicine
Final Report Abstract
Children are usually born after 40 weeks of pregnancy. Children who are born before 37 weeks of pregnancy are born too early or “preterm”. Preterm born people are at an increased risk of weakened lung function, lesser growth as well as movement, thinking-related and behavioural problems. These might be positively influenced by hobbies. However, hobbies and its possible effect have rarely been studied in preterm born people. Especially participation in music activities has not been described in preterm born people. Few data are available for participation in sport. A study with very many children in the UK showed that for sport it does not matter how much too early children are born. They are almost the same about going to club sport or run around outside. However, preterm born children who are very thin or have weak lungs or movement problems do less sport. Until now no researcher has looked into music or drama or drawing as hobbies that could help preterm born children to think better, behave better or feel better. Preterm born children with weak lungs do less sport and preterm born children doing more sport have stronger lungs. We do not know which way around this is. Preterm born adults who do sports are fitter and less overweight. Children who go to club sport when they are 5 years old and do this for many years are not as overweight as children that do not always go to club sport. This is true for children that were born on time or only very little too early. Children that were born more than six weeks too early are often very thin during childhood; they do not become thinner when they go to club sport. Hobbies might help children born too early. We need to ask what kind of activity they are doing, how often and how hard they do it. For sport there is a good list of questions called “MoMo”. Anyway, we better measure how much they run around with a special wrist band (accelerometer) also. We need studies that measure how much sport children do and how skilful they are. Then we need to do the same again after some time. In preterm born children with weak lungs we need to test whether certain sports make their lungs stronger. Here we need examine which sport is best, how often, how long and how hard they need to do it. Early music education is a music activity that all children can do. Even children who have difficulties to concentrate for a long time or have thinking or movement problems can do early music education. We need studies to see whether early music education helps preterm born children to concentrate better, think better or feel better. Preterm born children from rich families already often do early music education and often have fewer problems. Therefore, we should study early music education especially in preterm born children whose families cannot afford it.
Publications
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Association of physical activity and cardiorespiratory function or BMI and body composition in preterm-born individuals: a systematic review. Acta paediatrica (Oslo, Norway : 1992). 2019;108:1205-14
Spiegler J, Eves R, Mendonca M, Wolke D
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Association of sport participation in preterm and full term born children and body and fat mass indices from age 3 to 14 years. Journal of Science and Medicine in Sport. 2019
Spiegler J, Mendonça M, Wolke D
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Prospective Study of Physical Activity of Preterm Born Children from Age 5 to 14 Years. The Journal of pediatrics. 2019;208:66-73 e7
Spiegler J, Mendonca M, Wolke D
