Postnatal dexamethasone treatment for preterm infants at high risk for bronchopulmonary dysplasia is associated with improved regional brain volumes: a prospective cohort study
Objective To evaluate the effect of low-dose postnatal dexamethasone therapy for bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) prevention/treatment on MRI-derived regional brain volumes at term-equivalent age (TEA) and neurodevelopmental outcomes in a regional cohort of preterm infants. Study design We prospectively recruited 392 preterm infants (≤32 weeks gestational age (GA)), who underwent structural MRI (3T Philips Ingenia) at TEA. We automatically segmented T2-weighted MRI scans using the Developing Human Connectome Project pipeline to derive a priori selected, two primary outcomes of interest: volumes of the cerebellum and subcortical grey matter. We estimated propensity scores for subjects with a logistic regression model and used weighted linear regression to determine the independent effects of dexamethasone on primary and two secondary outcomes: cortical surface area at TEA and motor scores at 2 years corrected age. Results Of 392 infants, 41 were treated with low cumulative dose dexameth
