OBJECTIVE: Concerns exist regarding potential adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes associated with paracetamol exposure during pregnancy and early infancy. This review evaluates the evidence for the impact of paracetamol use for patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) treatment on neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm infants.
METHODS: A literature search was performed via Medline, Ovid Embase and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) databases. The search details are below: (\'Infant, Newborn\' [MeSH] OR \'neonate*\' [Title/Abstract]) AND (\'Paracetamol\' [MeSH] OR \'Acetaminophen\' [Title/Abstract]) AND (\'Ductus Arteriosus, Patent/drug therapy\' [MeSH] OR \'patent ductus arteriosus\' [Title/Abstract]) AND (\'Neurodevelopmental Disorders\' [MeSH] OR \'neurodevelopment*\' [Title/Abstract] OR \'Child Development\' [MeSH] OR \'Developmental Disabilities\' [MeSH]). All studies were critically appraised and synthesised.
RESULTS: Seven studies reported neurodevelopmental outcomes after paracetamol use for PDA treatment in preterm infants <32 weeks gestation. The studies varied in dosage, route, and duration of paracetamol administration and in the methods used to assess neurodevelopmental outcomes. None of the studies revealed different outcomes between paracetamol-exposed preterm infants and controls.
CONCLUSIONS: Current low-to-moderate quality evidence suggests no association between paracetamol used for PDA treatment and adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm infants. Future well-powered studies with standardised neurodevelopmental assessments are warranted to strengthen the current evidence base.

BACKGROUND: Sensitive measures to predict neuromotor outcomes from data collected early in infancy are lacking. Measures derived from the recordings of infant movement using wearable sensors may be a useful new technique.
METHODS: We collected full-day leg movement of 41 infants in rural Guatemala across 3 visits between birth and 6 months of age using wearable sensors. Average leg movement rate and fuzzy entropy, a measure to describe the complexity of signals, of the leg movements\' peak acceleration time series and the time series itself were derived. We tested the three measures for the predictability of infants\' developmental outcome, Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development III motor, language, or cognitive composite score assessed at 12 months of age. We performed quantile regressions with clustered standard errors, accounting for the multiple visits for each infant.
RESULTS: Fuzzy entropy was associated with the motor composite score at the 0.5 quantiles; this association was not found for the other two measures. Also, no leg movement characteristic was associated with language or cognitive composite scores.
CONCLUSIONS: We propose that the entropy of leg movement associated peak accelerations calculated from the wearable sensor data collected for a full-day can be considered as one predictor for infants\' motor developmental outcome assessed with Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development III at 12 months of age.

UNASSIGNED: The testing of visuocognitive development in preterm infants shows strong interactions between perinatal characteristics and cognition, learning and overall neurodevelopment evolution. The assessment of anticipatory gaze data of object-location bindings via eye-tracking can predict the neurodevelopment of preterm infants at the age of 3 years; little is known, however, about the early cognitive function and its assessment methods during the first year of life.
UNASSIGNED: The current study presents data from a novel assessment tool, a Delayed Match Retrieval (DMR) paradigm via eye-tracking was used to measure visual working memory (VWM) and attention skills. The eye-tracking task that was designed to measure infants\' ability to actively localize objects and to make online predictions of object-location bindings. 63 infants participated in the study, 39 preterm infants and 24 healthy full term infants - at a corrected age of 8-9 months for premature infants and similar chronological age for full term infants. Infants were also administered the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development.
UNASSIGNED: The analysis of the Bayley scores showed no significant difference between the two groups while the eye-tracking data showed a significant group effect on all measurements. Moreover, preterm infants\' VWM performance was significantly lower than full term\'s. Birth weight affected the gaze time on all Areas Of Interest (AOIs), overall VWM performance and the scores at the Cognitive Bayley subscale. Furthermore, preterm infants with fetal growth restriction (FGR) showed significant performance effects in the eye-tracking measurements but not on their Bayley scores verifying the high discriminatory value of the eye gaze data.
UNASSIGNED: Visual working memory and attention as measured via eye-tracking is a non-intrusive, painless, short duration procedure (approx. 4-min) was found to be a significant tool for identifying prematurity and FGR effects on the development of cognition during the first year of life. Bayley Scales alone may not pick up these deficits. Identifying tools for early neurodevelopmental assessments and cognitive function is important in order to enable earlier support and intervention in the vulnerable group of premature infants, given the associations between foundational executive functional skills and later cognitive and academic ability.

BACKGROUND: Attempts to conduct meta-analyses of the association between child development and diabetes have been limited by the wide range of tools and definitions of developmental outcomes used in the literature. We aim to meta-analyze a widely used measure of child development, the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, with respect to exposure to diabetes and developmental scores.
METHODS: PsycINFO, MEDLINE/PubMed, EMBASE, Emcare, and Google Scholar databases were searched. Two independent reviewers screened, extracted, and quality-appraised the studies using JBI SUMARI software. Forest plots were created with the standardized mean difference using the random-effects model, and heterogeneity was assessed using I2.
RESULTS: Seven studies were identified. The pooled results on psychomotor and mental development index mean scores were lower for infants born to mothers with diabetes than for the control group (Cohen\'s d = -4.49, df = 7, I2 = 0%, p = 0.001 and Cohen\'s d = -3.4, df = 9, I2 = 27%, p = 0.001, respectively). Effects were larger in infants born to mothers with type 1 and 2 diabetes and at age 12 months.
CONCLUSIONS: Maternal diabetes should be considered as a risk factor for children\'s development, mainly when born to mothers with pre-existing diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Integrating family-centered care (FCC) and developmental care (DC) principles in neonatal care settings may improve neurodevelopmental outcomes for high-risk neonates. However, the combined impact of FCC and DC has been underexplored. This study aimed to investigate the effects of integrated FCC and DC on neurodevelopment and length of hospital stay in high-risk neonates.
METHODS: A quasi-experimental pre-post study was conducted among 200 high-risk neonates (<32 weeks gestation or <1500 g) admitted to neonatal intensive care units (NICU) in Saudi Arabia. The intervention group (n = 100) received integrated FCC and DC for 6 months. The control group (n = 100) received standard care. Neurodevelopment was assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development-III. Length of stay and readmissions were extracted from medical records.
RESULTS: The intervention group showed significant improvements in cognitive, motor, and language scores compared to controls (p < 0.05). The intervention group had a 4.3-day reduction in the mean length of stay versus a 1.4-day reduction in controls (p = 0.02). Integrated care independently predicted higher cognitive scores (p = 0.001) and shorter stays (p = 0.006) in regression models.
CONCLUSIONS: Integrating FCC and DC in neonatal care enhances neurodevelopmental outcomes and reduces hospitalization for high-risk neonates compared to standard care. Implementing relationship-based, developmentally supportive models is critical for optimizing outcomes in this vulnerable population.

Despite numerous studies on early child development, there is still much to be discovered about the significance of possible risk factors. This study examines cognitive, motor, and language development of healthy children growing up in a low-risk environment and how various individual and environmental factors are associated with it. The study also considers whether the importance of particular parameters changes depending on child age.
Within the framework of the LIFE Child study in Leipzig, Germany, 481 children participated in a total of 832 visits between 1 and 36 months of age. Developmental status was assessed using the Third Edition of the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development. Linear regression analyses were applied to examine the associations between child development and sex, gestational age, birth weight, birth mode, overweight, height, and parental education.
Mean Bayley composite scores for cognitive, language, and motor development were close to the standard value of 100. Poorer developmental outcomes were significantly associated with lower gestational age, vacuum cup/forceps birth, being overweight, small height, and lower parental education, although some of the associations became insignificant after applying multivariate models. While the association between gestational age and language development became weaker with advancing age, our interaction models found disparities related to parental education to become more apparent in older children across all three domains of early child development.
Several factors were identified to be associated with early child development. As children grow older, obstetric parameters, for example, gestational age, might become less relevant compared with sociodemographic factors, for example, parental education.

To analyze the association between neonatal near miss and infant development at two years.
Data from two birth cohorts, one conducted in Ribeirão Preto (RP)/São Paulo and the other in São Luís (SL)/Maranhão, were used. The cognitive, motor and communication development of children was evaluated using the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development, Third Edition (Bayley-III). The following criteria were used for the definition of NNM: birth weight < 1,500 g, 5-min Apgar score < 7, gestational age < 32 weeks, and report of congenital malformations. The relationship between neonatal near miss and development was assessed using the weighted propensity score from the Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW). A directed acyclic graph was built to select the adjustment variables.
A total of 1,050 mother-newborn dyads were evaluated in SL and 1,840 in RP. Regarding outcomes in SL and RP, respectively, 2.4% and 17.3% of the children were not competent in the cognitive domain, 12.1% and 13.3% in the receptive communication domain, 39.2% and 47.1% in the expressive communication domain, 20.7% and 12.6% in the fine motor domain, and 14.3% and 13.8% in the gross motor domain. The prevalence of neonatal near miss was 5.4% in SL and 4.3% in RP. Unadjusted analysis showed an association of neonatal near miss with fine motor development in SL and RP and with the cognitive, receptive communication, expressive communication, and gross motor domains only in RP. These associations remained after adjusted analysis.
Neonatal near miss is a risk factor for developmental delays.

The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development is widely used worldwide. The objective of the current study was to measure the stability of the Bayley Scales during early childhood and its relationship with intellectual abilities at four years in young Nepalese children.
In a prospective cohort we used the Bayley 3rd edition to measure early child development in 529 Nepalese children at 6-11, 18-23 and 30-35 months. At four years, we used the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence (WPPSI) to measure intellectual abilities. We expressed the stability of the Bayley scores by intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and concordance correlation coefficients (CCCs). The relationship between the Bayley scores and the WPPSI full-scale IQ (FSIQ) at four years was examined in regression models.
The ICCs between the Bayley scores across timepoints were 0.01 (95 % CI -0.06, 0.04), 0.19 (95 % CI 0.15, 0.26) and 0.22 (95 % CI 0.17, 0.28) for the Cognitive, Language and Motor composite scores. The CCC for the composite scores ranged from 0.05 to 0.20 between 6 and 11 and 30-35 months and from 0.20 to 0.36 between 18 and 23 and 30-35 months. The Bayley scores at 6-11, 18-23 and 30-35 months explained 3 %, 20 % and 36 % of the variation of the FSIQ.
The stability of the Bayley scales is poor in early childhood, and its relationship with future intellectual abilities is poor in infancy but improves slightly with age in early childhood. Findings from this large community-based cohort of healthy at-risk children are relevant when measuring early child development worldwide.

Background: The Benefits and Risks of Iron interventionS in Children (BRISC) trial will evaluate the impact of universal supplementation with iron supplements or iron-containing multiple micronutrient powders (MNPs) compared with placebo given for 3 months on child development, growth, morbidity, laboratory indices of anaemia, iron deficiency, and inflammation at end of intervention and after a further 9 months post intervention in children aged 8 months living in rural Bangladesh. This paper describes the statistical analysis plan. Methods: BRISC is a multi-site, three-arm, double-dummy blinded, parallel group, randomised control superiority trial in 3300 children. The statistical analysis plan was developed by the trial statistician in consultation with the trial steering committee and trial management committee based on the protocol, data collection forms, and study outcomes available in the blinded study database.   Conclusion: This detailed statistical analysis plan published prior to unblinding the allocated treatments will support the statistical analyses and reporting of the BRISC trial to be undertaken after unblinding. It allows for transparency as well as reproducibility of statistical analyses and reporting. Registration: Australian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12617000660381 (registered on 8 May 2017); World Health Organization Universal Trial Number U1111-1196-1125.

Remote methods for data collection allow us to quickly collect large amounts of data, offering several advantages as compared to in-lab administration. We investigated the applicability of an online assessment of motor, cognitive, and communicative development in 4-month-old infants based on several items of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, 3rd edition (BSID-III). We chose a subset of items which were representative of the typical developmental achievements at 4 months of age and that we could administer online with the help of the infant\'s caregiver using materials which were easily available at home. Results showed that, in a sample of infants tested live (N = 18), the raw scores of the BSID-III were significantly correlated with the raw scores of a subset of items corresponding to those administered to a sample of infants tested online (N = 53). Moreover, for the \"online\" participants, the raw scores of the online assessment did not significantly differ from the corresponding scores of the \"live\" participants. These findings suggest that the online assessment was to some extent comparable to the live administration of the same items, thus representing a viable opportunity to remotely evaluate infant development when in-person assessment is not possible.