Black babies are about 30 percent more likely to have cerebral palsy than white children, a new study suggests, but the racial disparity could have more to do with trends in birth weight than anything else.

In a study of 6.2 million California births between 1991 and 2001, researchers found about 8,400 children with cerebral palsy. Of those, black children were significantly more likely to have the condition, but such babies were also more likely to be born underweight or premature, two factors correlated with higher risk for the disorder, according to findings published online Monday in the journal Pediatrics.

Meanwhile, Hispanic children had about the same risk for cerebral palsy as whites, while Asian babies were least likely to have the condition.

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Interestingly, when researchers discounted children with low birth weight, black children were far less likely than white kids to have cerebral palsy.

The findings suggest that better prenatal care, particularly among those in at-risk populations, might help in reducing the number of children born with cerebral palsy.

“If we could eliminate the racial disparity in low birth weight deliveries, then we would also eliminate the differences in cerebral palsy between blacks and whites,” Yvonne Wu, a pediatric neurologist at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study, told Reuters. To read more click here.

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