No long-term harm from prenatal phenobarbital. (IQ, Behavior, Head Size Evaluated).

NEW ORLEANS -- Neither administration of prenatal phenobarbital nor the repetitive use of corticosteroids during pregnancy was associated with developmental impairments in a group of 291 children followed up to 7 years of age.

A secondary analysis of a double-blind trial originally designed to test the potential of phenobarbital and vitamin K for the prevention of severe intracranial hemorrhage in premature newborns found "absolutely no differences" in intelligence, behavior, or head circumference in children treated prenatally with these drugs, compared with those given placebo, Dr. James A. Thorp said at the annual meeting of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

For the purposes of this analysis, intelligence was rated on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III (WISC-III), achievement was assessed on the Wide Range Achievement Test-3 (WRAT-3), and behavior was evaluated according to the teacher report form and child behavioral checklist.

In the full-scale IQ section of WISC-III, the mean score for children in the active treatment group was 100.6, compared with 100.3 in the placebo group. Mean performance IQ score and mean verbal scores were, respectively, 101.5 and 99.6 in the treatment group and 100.3 and 100.2 in the placebo group. None of these scores differs significantly from the others.

There also were no differences in mean WRAT-3 scores between the treatment and placebo groups in reading (98 and 97.3, respectively), spelling (95.3 and 95.8, respectively), or arithmetic (94.5 and 95.9, respectively), said Dr. Thorp of Sacred Heart Women's Hospital, Pensacola.

Not only were there no differences in any scores between the groups, there also were no differences in the proportion of low IQ scores or high behavioral scores ...