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Causes of CP
Studies that
try to find out what causes CP usually start by looking for
risk factors. Risk factors are things that happened before
CP started, and that might be causes of CP because they
occurred more often to people with CP than to people without
CP. For example, it has been thought for a long time that
difficult births might be
a cause of CP, as they are seen more often in the histories
of people with CP than in people without (though lots of
people with CP have had completely normal
births, and lots of people
without CP have had difficult
births).
There is a big difference between finding a risk factor and
being sure that it is a cause of CP. For example, there
are now studies that suggest that difficult
births in CP are really
due to earlier problems in pregnancy, and that these
problems led both to the difficult
birth and to the CP. So
the difficult birth, at
least in some cases, may not be the real cause of CP.
In this section, we review the latest studies on risk
factors for CP. It is important to keep in mind that not
every risk factor is a cause. And even when we find causes
for CP, we do not necessarily have a way of dealing with the
cause. Parents will sometimes say, when they learn that
something is a risk factor for CP, “I should have done
something differently” or “I shouldn’t have eaten that food
when I was pregnant” or “I should have had my baby in a
different hospital” . This kind of thinking can cause a
great deal of unnecessary distress to parents. At the
present time, there are very few things we know of that
parents could have done differently that would have
prevented CP from occurring to their children.
As you read about these studies, you will see there is no
complete answer to what causes CP. The studies are steps on
the way to learning more about the causes of CP.
Literature Review Summaries
In
this section you will find information regarding
new learning about cerebral palsy with emphasis
on causation. A brief summary of a particular
area of research will be provided and in some
cases linked to more in depth reviews.
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