Background: Prematurity is the most common cause of neonatal death, resulting in approximately 80% of the deaths of infants without congenital abnormalities.Objectives: This study aimed to determine the survival of low birth weight infants and to investigate the effect of birth weight, gestational age, and Apgar score on mortality rate.Patients and Methods: We retrospectively studied the mortality and survival of 798 newborns with birth weight of<2500 g during a 4-year period in the neonatal intensive care unit of a referral hospital in Qom, Iran.Results: The survival-to-discharge rate was 50% for infants weighing<1000 g and 84.2% for those weighing 1000 – 1499 g. Survival rates at 26, 27, and 28 weeks’ gestation were 54.1%, 63.6%, and 70.2%, respectively. An Apgar score of more than 5 at the first minute and more than 7 at the fifth minute were associated with better survival after hospital discharge.Conclusions: Our study showed that even with modern perinatal technology and care, early deaths of extremely low birth weight infants are common in our hospitals.

Background: Almost 7.7 percent of all newborns weigh less than 2500 g in different countries. One of the most important reasons that lead to low birth weight, is maternal anemia during pregnancy. On the other hand, if maternal hemoglobin is too high, the prenatal outcome is not good. In this research we studied the relationship between maternal hematocrit (Hct) and birth weight, as well as the risk of low birth weight (LBW).Methods: This is a cohort study on all pregnant women who used to come to Arash hospital to receive prenatal care (April 2003 – March 2004) and they also delivered there.Findings: If pregnant women have abnormal (higher or lower than normal) Hct level in the first or third trimester, the mean birth weight will be lower and the risk of LBW higher. Maternal Hct level, maternal height, maternal weight and gestational age at delivery have relation to the risk of LBW.Conclusions: It seems that an unfavorable level of maternal Hct is associated with a decrease in newborn's weight and LBW. So, special attention to the level of maternal Hct during pregnancy and control of it can decrease LBW incidence.

Objective: Studies demonstrated that 5-10% of preschool children have visual impairment. By age seven, up to 13% of children will have some defect in visual acuity. Both prematurity and low birth weight have been associated with an increased incidence of ophthalmic disorders. In this study we determined prevalence of visual impairment in low birth weight and normal birth weight school age children in Mashhad.Methods: This is a cross sectional study. The target population consisted of all children referred I to educational organizations for screening before entering school in Mashhad, Iran. 2400 children enrolled in the study and were evaluated for amblyopic, refractive errors, color vision disturbance and optic nerve problems. Data were analyzed by SPSS.Findings: Prevalence of ophthalmic problems in all children was 5.43% and in low birth weight and normal birth weight 8.29% and 5.74% respectively. Incidence of ophthalmic problems was significantly (P=0.029) higher in low birth weight children than in normal birth weight children. The most common ophthalmic disease in both low birth weight and normal birth weight children was refractive errors 81.5% vs. 68.8 % (P<0.05). Prevalence of myopia, amblyopia and color vision disturbance was also higher in low birth weight than in normal birth weight children.Conclusion: Low birth weight children are at greater risk of the visual impairment that may occur at an early age and result in long term morbidity. Visual outcome of low birth weight neonates should be evaluated routinely.

This study aimed to estimate the genetic parameters of body weight traits in Markhoz goats, using B-spline random regression models. The data used in this study included 19549 records collected during 29 years (1992-2021) in Markhoz goat Breeding Research Station, located in Sanandaj, Iran. The model used to analyze data included fixed effects (year of birth, sex, type of birth and age of dam) and random effects including direct additive genetic, maternal additive genetic, permanent environmental and maternal permanent environmental assuming homogeneous and heterogeneous residual variance during the time. Akaike (BIC) and Bayesian (BIC) information criteria were used to compare the models and bspq.4.4.4.4 was selected as the best model. The direct heritability values for birth, 3-month, 6-month, 9-month and 12-month weights were estimated to be 0.14, 0.16, 0.08, 0.28 and 0.26, respectively. Genetic correlation between body weights at birth and 3-month, birth and 6-month, birth and 9-month, birth and 12-month, 3-month and 6-month, 3-month and 9-month, 3-month and 12-month, 6-months and 9-month and 9-month and 12-month were 0.22, 0.38, 0.21, 0.56, -0.26, 0.30, 0.62, 0.86 and 0.77, respectively. The highest phenotypic correlation was between the weight of 9-month and 12-month (0.82) and the lowest correlation was between birth weight and 3-month and 6-month (0.12). The results showed that the 9-month weight is a good criterion for selection in Markhoz goats.

Background and Objectives: The association between discordant growth and the complication of twin prgnancy has been recognized for more than 30years. Recent publications have presented evidence that 30% or even 40% discordancere presents the threshold for significante. Our purpose was to define twin growth discordance on the basis of perinatal outcome and other factors like mathernal age pariety and systemic disease. Materials and Methods: Twins delivered at age more than 32 week"s gestation between 1998-2000 at Deziani hospital Gorgan was identified. Birth weight, pre-term birth, mathernal age pariety and systemic disease and sex of twins recorded. Discordance was calculated as: 100 x Larger BW-Samller BW/Larger BW Results: The mean discordance for 435 twins was 8.18±6.79. 96.4% ofpre-term birth associated with discordance ≥20%. 10.6%of mathers had a systemic disease and mean discordance in twins term and pre-term of normal mothers was 5.8±4.5, 7.9±6.3 and in systemic disease was 9±9.2, 11.1±8.8(P:S;0.008).There was no diffrences in pariety age and sex. Conclusion: Twin birth weight discordance had now clearly been demonstratd to be a risk factor for pre-term birth. The effect was found particularly with discordances ≥20% after 32 week"s gestation.

Background: Low-birth-weight (LBW) is universally used as an indicator of health status and is an important subject of national concern and a focus of health policy. LBW has been shown to be associated with a higher risk for childhood mortality and morbidity. Objective: To determine the important risk factors which could affect the delivery of LBW neonates. Methods: This case-control study was undertaken to determine some risk factors for LBW in two university hospitals in Tehran during a 12-month period between 2002 and 2003. One hundred and sixty neonates constituted the LBW group and 300 neonates constituted the control group. Maternal risk factors including body mass index (BMI), educational level, interval between pregnancies, history of previous delivery of LBW neonates, abortion, infertility, unwanted pregnancy, and diseases were analyzed between the two groups. Mean of maternal age was similar between the two groups. Results: Of 160 LBW neonates, 58% were females and 42% males. It was found that mother’s BMI, unwanted pregnancy, educational level of mother, short and long intervals between pregnan­cies, previous history of delivering LBW neonates, and maternal diseases are associated with an increased risk of LBW. Conclusion: The majority of factors which lead to the delivery of LBW neonates are preventable.

Low birth weight (LBW, Birth Weight <2500g) is a significant health problem of children. Many studies have made it apparent that there is a direct relationship between low birth weight and infant motality.One of the most important measurements to prevent children morbidity is growth monitoring and the present study was set up to compare the growth Indexes of 2 year old children born with low weight with those weighting 2500 g and more at birth (mormal birth weight, NBW).This research is a retrospective cohort study and the samples include 218 two year old infants (109 LBW infants, 109 NBW infants).Selection criteria for the LBW and NBW infants were factors such as having birth weight <2500 gr in LBW group and 2500 -4000 in NBW group, absence of congenital anomalies, born from singleton pregnancies etc. Needed data were collected in questionnaires by researcher and for this purpose the measurements of children weight, height and head circumference at ages in 2 years after birth that had been recorded in their health files were used. Statistical analysis was carried out with help oft-test and X test. Our findings revealed that the group of LBW children had a statistically significant lower body weight, shorter height, smaller head circumferences and lower weight - for- age, height -for –age and weight- for - height indexes in two year children than the group of NBW children. Moreover, the weight percentile of LBW children at 2 years of age was lower than one in the NBW group. The data suggest that low birth weight adversely affects on child's growth in early life. Therefore, LBW infants require special considerations about growth follow up and monitoring after birth.

The birth weight is one of the indicators of mother's health during pregnancy and it is the preliminary guarantee for health and growth of neonatal period. In various studies the factors which have influence on birth weight are weight gain during pregnancy, body mass index (BMI) of prepregnancy, mother's age and neonatal sex. Attending to importance of birth weight, noticing to some controllable effective factors are valuable, like mother's weight gain during pregnancy. Because investigations about effective factors on birth weight in Iranian mothers were not available, this cohreet study has been done on 206 healthy pregnant which started prenatal care during first trimester. In accordance with statistical analysis and making use of multiple regression test, there was a significant relation between birth weight and prepregnancy BMI (Pv=0. 00) weight of the previous neonate (Pv=0.02) and mother's weight gain during pregnancy (Pv =0.03). Meanwhile the birth weight was reduced by passive cigarette smoking and female gender of neonate. It seems appropriate suggestions in preconceptional care and performance of suitable measurements in prenatal care that could guarantee suitable birth weight.