A Study Of Cognitive And Developmental Impact In Preschool Children With Early Iron Deficiency

Background:Early iron deficiency will result in delaying myelin development,changing the dendritic cell differentiation,affecting dopamine and monoamine neurotransmitter metabolism and function.The studies about animals have shown that early iron deficiency mainly affects hippocampus and striatum which are the two main structures of brain.Related features of infants are still not fully recovered corresponding to the iron treatment,suggesting that brain damage caused by early iron deficiency is irreversible.Iron deficiency in infants can impair children’s cognitive function and delay motor maturity,prenatal iron deficiency will lead to 2 months old baby can’t recognize their mother’s voice,postnatal iron deficiency damages recognition memory in 9 months old infants.Early iron deficiency affects brain development which primarily in prenatal period.Executive function is senior congitive function and develops quickly to top in children born after 1-2 years,there may be an iron-dependent crucial period.Therefore,we study the cohort that is followed up to 4 to 5 years old,aim to understand the long-term effects of general cognition,motion and executive function caused by early iron deficiency and provide a scientific basis for early prevention of iron deficiency in maternal and child health field.Objective:Aim to discuss the long-term effects of general cognitive function,motor fiunction and executive function in preschool children with early iron deficiency.Identify the reversibility and duration of iron deficiency.Methods:Participants from the former NSFC and PPG2 projects in Fuyang,Zhejiang Province,China.we screen the 4 to5 years old children in the queue who have completed anerve physiology and psychological behavior assessment in 9 months and 18 months.We evaluate 4 to5 years old children’s behavior who are prenatal or postnatal or prenatal/postnatal ID or normal used by general cognition,motor function,executive function,Child Behavior Checklist and Conners parents questionnaire to understand early iron deficiency on the long-term effects of children’s cognition and behavior.Finally,we adopt the application of SPSS software such as independent samples t test,univariate analysis of variance to explore the influence of preschool children’s cognition and development with early iron deficiency.Results:The group with prenatal or postnatal iron deficiency is weaker in general cognition,fine motor precision,manual dexterity and inhibition than iron-suufficient group.But the difference isn’t statistically significant.Among them,fine motor precision and inhibition mainly affected by prenatal iron deficiency while manual dexterity does by postnatal iron deficiencyConclusions:Early iron deficiency may affect children’s general cognition and motor development in different degrees,its effect and reversibility depends on what brain regions and process are rapidly maturing.The effect of early iron deficiency on the brain function of children’s long term development is to be confirmed by expanded sample size.