Reading difficulty in school-aged very low birth weight infants in Japan

Akihito Takeuchi, Tatsuya Koeda, Toshimitsu Takayanagi, Kazuo Sato, Noriko Sugino, Motoki Bonno, Akiko Kada, Makoto Nakamura, Misao Kageyama

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

8 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Objective To investigate the prevalence of and the perinatal risk factors related to reading difficulty in school-aged very low birth weight infants (VLBWI) with normal intelligence. Methods Subjects were 79 Japanese children in the second to fourth grade of elementary school who had been born at very low birth weight and who regularly visited a follow-up clinic at one of four hospitals. All members had a full-scale IQ score of 80 or higher. Perinatal information was obtained retrospectively from medical records. Each subject underwent four reading tasks, testing monomoratic syllable reading, word reading, non-word reading and short sentence reading. Subjects with an SD reading time score greater than 2.0 in two or more tasks were considered to have reading difficulty (RD). Furthermore we investigated the relations between RD and perinatal factors using logistic regression analysis adjusted for potential confounding factors. Results Twenty-five (31.6%) out of 79 subjects had RD. We discovered that treated retinopathy of prematurity (tRoP) was a significant risk factor (adjusted OR = 5.80, 95% confidence interval = 1.51–22.33). Conclusion The rate of RD in school-aged VLBWI was higher than the estimated prevalence of dyslexia in Japan. Even in children with normal intelligence, long-term developmental follow-up including support for reading skills is necessary for VLBWI. Further investigation is desired to elucidate the relations between visual problems and RD in school-aged children.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)800-806
Number of pages7
JournalBrain and Development
Volume38
Issue number9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2016
Externally publishedYes

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Pediatrics, Perinatology, and Child Health
  • Developmental Neuroscience
  • Clinical Neurology

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