A new study claims that spending a week longer in the womb may give babies a better cognitive ability but also increase risk of a physical disability.
Researchers found that babies born at late term - 41 weeks' gestation - are slightly more likely to be classified as gifted and have higher standardised test scores than babies born at full term, or at 40 weeks' gestation. However, babies born at 41 weeks also showed a slightly higher chance of having a physical disability than babies born at 40 weeks, researchers said.
"What our findings suggest is that while 40 weeks remains the safest time for most babies to be delivered, in uncomplicated pregnancies, going another week seems to have beneficial effects on later performance in school," said Jeffrey Roth from University of Florida in the US.
Children born at the 41st week were found to score somewhat better on tests given at third through eighth grade. Late-term infants were 2.8% more likely to be classified as gifted and 3.1% less likely to have poor cognitive outcomes compared with full-term infants, researchers said. Late-term infants were also 2.1% more likely to be classified as having a physical disability that requires special classroom accommodation, they said. These physical disabilities most commonly include speech pathologies as well as sensory disorders and orthopedic conditions, and can include children being homebound or hospitalised.
The children of women with low education levels - defined as not having completed high school - demonstrated the largest advantage of spending another week in the womb.
Compared with children born full term, children born to low-education mothers at 41 weeks are 7.6% more likely to be gifted and 4.2% less likely to have poor cognitive outcomes, researchers said.The differences in physical disability rates - 5.1% higher than children born at 40 weeks - are also larger for the low-education group, they said. These children may have benefited from the extra week of uninterrupted brain maturation, said Roth.
Researchers drew their results from 1.5 million Florida birth records between 1994 and 2002. They linked birth certificate information to public school records from 1998 to 2013.
The findings were published in the journal, JAMA Pediatrics.
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