Daily Mail sensationalism...

Yesterday, the Daily Mail ran a scare story on its front page suggesting that children born just one week early have special needs later in life.

So what did they actually find? First, it's important to understand what they did. They looked at children born at different weeks of gestation, looked at the frequency (%) of those who were registered for special needs and then compared this to the frequency for children born at 40 weeks.

Here are some figures taken from the paper:
- Odds ratio for children born at 40 weeks: 1 (so this is our baseline)
- Odds ratio for children born at 39 weeks: 1.09
- Odds ratio for children born at 38 weeks: 1.24
- Odds ratio for children born at 37 weeks: 1.43

Now let's look at the odds ratios for children born very premature
- Odds ratio for children born at 28-32 weeks: 3.21
- Odds ratio for children born at 24-27 weeks: 9.14

I hope it's clear that, while the paper did find an increased risk of special needs in children born one week early, this is actually quite a small increase. Yes, it is significant, but the increased risk is still very small.

This is a real example of journalists taking science and using it to scare women so that they can increase their sales, web hits and comments on their forums. There is nothing wrong with the science has been done, but the risks have really been blown out of all proportion.

So if you have your child a week early, you really shouldn't worry yourself too much. The increased risk of special needs is very small and what is included within the category of "special needs" is very broad and includes many things, not just autism, ADHD, dyslexia and deafness - the special needs that the Daily Mail chooses to emphasise.

The full scientific paper can be found here.