this study is not just of interest because i am former micropreemie ( is “former” really correct? unfortunately the evidence seems to indicate that “once a micropreemie, always a micropreemie” ) and i’m the father of a micropreemie, but also because it’s one of the few studies that i’ve seen that exams the long-term effects of being born very, very early.

sadly there have not been more papers published on long-term outcomes because until relatively recently it was exceedingly difficult to design the studies since the sample size was too small ( pun intended, i guess ) as most the of would-be subjects died soon after birth. the article mentions that 329,495 were enrolled in the study, but i’m guessing that the number of men born premature was a small subset of the total number participants.

presumably over the next decade we’ll see much more research being published thanks to the always-increasing odds of survival for infants born prior to 28 weeks.

and for the record, i don’t have a history of high blood pressure – it’d be interesting to know if the effect was only detectable after a certain age.