Biological and Environmental Factors Associated with Developmental Coordination Disorder in Mexican Children from National Rehabilitation Institute: A Case-Control Study

Background: Developmental coordination disorder (DCD) significantly affects a child's ability to learn and perform everyday self-care and academic tasks. It is reported to be more prevalent in children born in an adverse prenatal environment, such as extremely low birth weight or prematurity, although the potential mechanisms have not been explicitly described. There is a screening instrument for DCD that was developed in Canada for parents, and which already has a Spanish version, is the Developmental Coordination Disorder Questionnaire (DCDQ '07). The DCDQ '07 has a sensitivity of 85% and specificity of 71%. The aim of the study was to describe the demographic characteristics of the built-in sample: age, gender, and comorbidities, as well as to determine possible clinical and socio-environmental risk factors involved in developmental coordination disorder. Materials and Methods: A case-control analysis was conducted, including patients with probable diagnosis of DCD, aging between 5-11 years, from the Pediatric Rehabilitation Service. As a result of the assessment in the consultation, the Developmental Coordination Disorder Screening Questionnaire (DCDQ '07) was applied. Once applied, an analysis was made to determine biological and environmental risk factors, both in patients with suspected DCD (score between 15-46) and in those who probably did not have DCD (score between 47-75). A comparison of means was made with Student´s t test and Mann-Whitney U test after proving normality with Kolmogorov-Smirnov. It was possible to apply a Linear Regression model by including the variables with p = 0.15 as a maximum. With a sample of 73 patients, 44 cases of children with probable DCD and 29 controls (healthy children). Results: Children with probable DCD were found to have 6.2 times more exposure to risk of preterm labor and 7.0 times more exposure to cesarean delivery; 18.2% were dystocic deliveries, versus 0% of controls; furthermore, it is noteworthy that the risk of being a child of a single mother was 6.0 times greater, and 9 times that of belonging to a dysfunctional family and having a low socioeconomic status. As expected, gestational age and birth weight were significantly lower in cases of probable DCD. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that the main factors associated in Mexican children with the diagnosis of probable DCD are low Apgar score, risk of preterm labor and risk of miscarriage, relevant factors were to be born to a single mother and to belong to a dysfunctional family.