Researchers at Arkansas Children’s Nutrition Center (ACNC) recently published a study that reveals cesarean delivery (C-section) may have a significant impact on infant brain development. The manuscript was published in The American Journal of Neuroradiology, produced by the American Society of Neuroradiology.
The global C-section rate has been increasing for decades. Until now, the pediatric outcomes associated with the increased C-section rate have been relatively unclear. Although some studies have suggested that C-sections may be associated with an increased risk of autism, attention deficit, and hyperactivity, other research has not found a clear link between C-section and brain outcomes such as intelligence quotient (IQ).
Xiawei Ou, PhD, director of the ACNC’s brain imaging laboratory and associate professor of radiology and pediatrics at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), along with collaborators at the Advanced Baby Imaging Lab at Brown University, set out to better characterize how C-section birth impacts brain development. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), they studied the brains of over 300 healthy children ranging in age from two weeks to eight years old.
Their results showed that babies who were born through C-section had significantly lower white matter development and functional connectivity in certain regions of the brain. These differences seem to disappear by around three years of age in the children studied.
“The clinical and scientific implications of these findings could be vast,” said Ou. “Knowing the underlying factors that drive brain remodeling and growth during infancy is critical to understand how early-life events such as C-section birth influence later-life behavior and cognition.”
The long-term ramifications of these findings are not known yet. Ou has secured pilot grant funding to further explore specific factors that impact brain biology, neurocognition, learning, and behavior phenotypes.
ACNC is a major research center of the Arkansas Children’s research enterprise funded by the USDA-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) as part of the Human Nutrition Research Centers program. ACNC is one of six USDA-ARS national human nutrition research centers.