Prematurity and Mortality in Childhood and Early Adulthood—Reply

In Reply: We recently reported that low gestational age at birth was independently associated with increased mortality in early childhood and young adulthood among individuals born in Sweden during 1973 to 1979. Dr Strunk and colleagues suggest that we examine an additional outcome, infection-related mortality. In the same study cohort, we identified 123 deaths due to “infectious and parasitic diseases” (codes 001-139 in ICD-8 or ICD-9 and codes A00-B99 in ICD -10), 87 deaths that were classified separately due to respiratory infections (codes 460-486 in ICD -8, codes 460-466 and 480-488 in ICD -9, and codes J00-J22 in ICD -10), and 33 deaths that were classified separately due to infectious meningitis (code 320 in ICD -8, codes 320-321 in ICD -9, and codes G00-G02 in ICD -10). We conducted a supplemental analysis in which we combined these diagnoses to examine the association between gestational age at birth and infection-related mortality.