Antenatal corticosteroid administration and early school age child development: A regression discontinuity study in British Columbia, Canada.

ABSTRACT:

Background

There are growing concerns that antenatal corticosteroid administration may harm children's neurodevelopment. We investigated the safety of antenatal corticosteroid administration practices for children's overall developmental health (skills and behaviors) at early school age.

Methods and findings

We linked population health and education databases from British Columbia (BC), Canada to identify a cohort of births admitted to hospital between 31 weeks, 0 days gestation (31+0 weeks), and 36+6 weeks, 2000 to 2013, with routine early school age child development testing. We used a regression discontinuity design to compare outcomes of infants admitted just before and just after the clinical threshold for corticosteroid administration of 34+0 weeks. We estimated the me

SUBMITTER: Hutcheon JA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7721186 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature