Genetic predictors of severe intraventricular hemorrhage in extremely low-birthweight infants.

Objective To test associations between grades 3 or 4 (severe) intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with coagulation, inflammation, angiogenesis, and organ development in an exploratory study. Study design Extremely low-birthweight (ELBW) infants enrolled in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Neonatal Research Network's (NRN) Cytokines Study were included if they had cranial ultrasound (CUS) and genotyping data available in the NRN Anonymized DNA Repository and Database. Associations between SNPs and IVH severity were tested with multivariable logistic regression analysis. Result One hundred thirty-nine infants with severe IVH and 687 infants with grade 1 or 0 IVH were included. One thousand two hundred seventy-nine SNPs were genotyped. Thirteen were preliminarily associated with severe IVH including five related to central nervous system (CNS) neuronal and neurovascular development. Conclusion Genetic variants for CNS neuronal and neurovascular development may be associated with severe IVH in premature infants.