Executive function difficulties after very preterm birth persisted to age 13

The edition in brief

In the Victorian Infant Brain Study, 224 children born before 30 weeks and 77 born at term were assessed with a parent-rated executive function inventory at 2, 5, 7 and 13 years. Very preterm children scored 0.3 to 0.7 standard deviations worse on every scale at every age, with no sign of catching up, and the gap tended to be larger in boys and in families with more social disadvantage. In 11,279 adolescents in the US ABCD study followed over five years, problematic social media use and depressive symptoms predicted each other in some years, more consistently in girls, but no prospective link with anxiety was found. A US Medicaid cohort of 893,212 mother-child pairs linked higher prenatal exposure to wildfire smoke particulates with autism (HR 1.30 per 0.75 µg/m³) but not ADHD. The pearl covers a structured psychosocial history for adolescents.