A first-of-its-kind estimate of cerebral palsy prevalence in young children shows that kids with the condition are being flagged for it earlier.
Children with cerebral palsy who were born in 2018 were more likely to be diagnosed by age 4 than those born in 2014, according to findings released recently in the journal Pediatrics: Open Science.
For the study, researchers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring, or ADDM, Network reviewed health and education records for nearly 215,000 children in communities in Georgia, Minnesota, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah to assess cerebral palsy prevalence in 2022.
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About half the kids studied were age 8 at the time. The other half were age 4, marking the first time that the CDC network sought to track prevalence for the younger age group.
Overall, the study found that 2.4 children per 1,000 had cerebral palsy at age 8, with spastic being the most common subtype. Nearly 60% could walk independently.
Black children were more likely than white children to have cerebral palsy and less likely to walk independently, the research shows.
Meanwhile, 4-year-olds had similar prevalence at 2.2 per 1,000, with boys more likely than girls to have a cerebral palsy diagnosis at that age, according to the findings.
“Getting a CP diagnosis can be a complicated process,” said Zachary Warren, principal investigator of the ADDM site at Vanderbilt University. “Understanding that CP is documented at different rates across different groups gives us new targets for education and outreach about risk, not only for providers but also for early interventionists, educators and most importantly, families.”
The ADDM Network is primarily responsible for regularly assessing autism prevalence in communities across the nation. In 2023, the CDC announced that some ADDM sites would start tracking cerebral palsy prevalence for the first time in more than a decade and the current findings are the result of that effort.
