Antenatal Corticosteroids and Child Neurodevelopment
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To determine the effect of antenatal corticosteroid administration on childhood neurodevelopmental outcomes from studies that have a design that minimized the risk of confounding. DATA SOURCES: We searched the MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials databases from inception to July 24, 2024, without language restrictions. METHODS OF STUDY SELECTION: Two reviewers independently selected randomized and observational comparative studies with a strong design to control for unmeasured confounding (ie, quasi-experimental studies), which evaluated neurodevelopmental outcomes among offspring aged 1-18 years who were exposed to one course of antenatal corticosteroid administration compared with placebo or no treatment. TABULATION, INTEGRATION, AND RESULTS: Two reviewers independently extracted data and assessed risk of bias. We used random-effects meta-analyses to synthesize outcomes based on blinded adjudication of appropriateness for pooling by clinical experts in child neurodevelopment. We evaluated the certainty of evidence using GRADE (Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation). A total of 14 studies (eight randomized controlled trial follow-up studies [n=2,233] and six quasi-experimental studies [n=277,679]) were included. Most neurodevelopmental outcomes examined (19/23) showed no association with antenatal corticosteroid administration. We found modestly decreased risks of nonverbal intelligence and visual memory scores among children exposed to antenatal corticosteroids. For general development and general behavior, randomized trial follow-up studies showed a nonsignificant trend toward a small protective and null effect, respectively, but quasi-experimental studies showed an increased risk. Among studies with low or moderate risk of bias, we found no association between antenatal corticosteroid administration and adverse child neurodevelopment. CONCLUSION: There is no consistent evidence that antenatal corticosteroids are associated with an increased risk of impaired childhood neurodevelopment among studies with a strong design to control for confounding. SYSTEMATIC REVIEW REGISTRATION: PROSPERO, CRD42021238558.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.021 | 0.104 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".