Potenciais Evocados Auditivos de Longa Latência e metabolismo oxidativo em recém-nascidos a termo e prematuros

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The proper integrity and functioning of the central structures are important for the linguistic and cognitive development and the Long Latency Auditory Evokes Potentials (LLAEP) allow the evaluation of the hearing information processing, considered as indicator of cognitive development, mainly in preterm infants, that present risks to alterations of hearing and language processing. The preterm infants are also vulnerable to cellular alterations. These alterations may cause several diseases during the neonatal period. The research of the oxidative metabolism through the Micronucleus Essay allows the identification of these alterations in cellular level. PURPOSE: To evaluate the LLAEPs and the oxidative metabolism of term and premature infants. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study consisted of newborns with no more than one month old that came to the Hospital Universitário de Santa Maria (HUSM) to the Neonatal Hearing Screening (NHS). The infants were divided in control group (CG) and study group (SG), with term and premature infants, respectively. The sample consisted of 15 individuals in each group for the oxidative metabolism evaluation and 15 term infants and 10 premature infants for the LLAEP evaluation. For the micronucleus test, epithelial cells of the mouth mucosa were collected, with acytobrush. The cells were analyzed in a laboratory. The LLAEPs were researched in binaural form, through insertion earphones, with frequent speech stimulation /ba/ and rare /ga/, analyzing only the exogenous potentials (P1, N1, P2 e N2). RESULTS: In general, for the oxidative metabolism research, there was statistically significant difference between the groups in the analysis of the Micronucleus Test. The number of altered micronucleus and cells was higher for the group of premature infants when compared with the group of term infants. For the LLAEPs there was no statistically significant difference for the latencies of the members P1 and N1. CONCLUSIONS: After this study, it was concluded that premature infants present higher index of cellular damage in nuclear level when compared with term infants. In the electrophysiological evaluation of the cortical potential, it was possible to observe the exogenous components P1 and N1, but there was no difference between the groups. More studies in this area are necessary in order to better understand the characteristics of these potentials in newborn and young infants.