Just Delaying Cord Clamping At Birth Can Boost Kids' Brain Development

Those children whose clamping of the umbilical cord is delayed by many minutes, rather than a few seconds, can develop better fine-motor skills, discloses a new randomized trial, according to cbc.

It is interesting that delayed clamping helps fetal blood to circulate in the placenta, so that it can be transferred to the baby. That would bring down the iron deficiency at four to six months of age. Hence, delaying clamping can help to improve the baby.

Swedish researchers picked out and randomly assigned 382 full-term infants born after low-risk pregnancies, to be clamped at least three minutes after delivery or within 10 seconds of birth.

Hence, once the children turned four, they were assessed by a psychologist on standard tests of IQ, motor skills and behaviour. Their communication and oral skills were also filled out by parents.

"Delayed cord clamping compared with early cord clamping improved scores and reduced the number of children having low scores in fine-motor skills and social domains," the study's lead author, Dr. Ola Andersson of Uppsala University in Sweden, and his co-authors said in Tuesday's issue of JAMA Pediatrics.

It was found that those whose clamping had been delayed showed finer motor skill tests and a "more mature pencil grip".

Even boys, who are said to show more iron deficiency than girls showed better improvements in fine motor skills when clamping was delayed.

Andersson agreed that when cord clamping is delayed, then it tends to make an impact on the iron content in blood, which leads to brain development after birth.

In 2013, the Cochrane Collaboration, an international network of scientists who regularly review medical research, concluded: "A more liberal approach to delaying clamping of the umbilical cord in healthy term infants appears to be warranted."

Dr. Hieki Rabe of the Brighton and Sussex Medical School in England and her co-authors concluded that "the potential benefit of improving maternal and neonatal care by a simple no-cost intervention of delayed [cord clamping] should be championed by the international community."

The new study was published in JAMA Pediatrics.