Thankful for breakthroughs!
t.co/Khbj4npOP1

Radiohead 3.5 hour sundown concert at Roskilde Festival 2008 (My best concert ever).
The next day Gnarls Barkley performed In Rainbows tracks at the same stage 😍

8/
This study stands out because it:
- Uses a sibling design to minimize confounding
- Examines infections week-by-week
- Leverages nationwide data and objective outcomes
- Includes IQ scores derived from military conscription test

Full paper: doi.org/10.1371/jour...
🧠📚

7/
So what does this mean?

✅ No strong evidence that common maternal infections impair children's cognitive development
✅ Reassuring safety signal for antimicrobial use during pregnancy
✅ No support for the idea of “critical windows” of vulnerability to common infections during pregnancy

6/
Overview of findings by exposure period during pregnancy (commons infections here identified by beta-lactam prescriptions)

5/
Overview of findings by exposure type (number of antimicrobial prescriptions, type of antimicrobial prescribed, and hospitalization for infectious disease)

4/
The findings?
In short: No consistent evidence of harm.

🧪 Filled prescriptions for antimicrobials (29.5% of pregnancies):
→ No impact on school grades in language or mathematics
→ No drop in adolescent IQ

3/
We used two markers of infection:
- Antibiotic prescriptions during pregnancy
- Hospitalizations for infections

Furthermore; we looked week-by-week across pregnancy to see if specific “sensitive periods” mattered (modelled both as categorical bi-weekly periods + natural cubic splines (in days))

2/
To answer this, we used a nationwide full-sibling cohort from Denmark:
➤ 274,166 children
➤ Born 1996–2003
➤ Linked to maternal infection data (antibiotic prescriptions or hospitalizations)
➤ Tracked school grades and IQ in adolescence

Sibling comparisons = control for family factors ✅

1/
Infections during pregnancy are common, and inflammation during critical fetal periods has long been suspected to affect brain development.

But do everyday maternal infections (e.g. like those treated with common antibiotics) influence how children perform cognitively long-term?

More details at our group website: feenstralab.github.io/posts/2025-0...