Of these children, 46 percent had moderate to severe disabilities such as cerebral palsy, vision or hearing loss and learning disabilities, 34 percent had mild disabilities, and 20 percent had no disabilities. 12 percent had disabling cerebral palsy. Up to 15 out of 100 premature infants have significant hearing loss.As survival has improved, the focus of interventions directed at the newborn has shifted to reduce long-term disabilities, particularly those related to brain injury. Some of the complications related to prematurity may not be apparent until years after the birth. A long-term study demonstrated that the risks of medical and social disabilities extend into adulthood and are higher with decreasing gestational age at birth and include cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, disorders of psychological development, behavior, and emotion, disabilities of vision and hearing, and epilepsy. Standard intelligence tests showed that 41 percent of children born between 22 and 25 weeks had moderate or severe learning disabilities when compared to the test scores of a group of similar classmates who were born at full term. It is also shown that higher levels of education were less likely to be obtained with decreasing gestational age at birth. People born prematurely may be more susceptible to developing depression as teenagers. Some of these problems can be described as being within the executive domain and have been speculated to arise due to decreased myelinization of the frontal lobes.
Excessive accumulation of lipids in tissues not designed for long term storage may underlie the clinical manifestations of weakened skeletal and cardiac muscle, fatty liver, pancreatitis, hypothyroidism, and type 2 diabetes. Diagnosis
Main physical signs include a fatty liver, a weakened and enlarged heart (cardiomyopathy), inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis), reduced thyroid activity (hypothyroidism), type 2 diabetes, abnormal levels of creatine kinase in blood, and increased weakness of proximal muscles due to fatty replacement of skeletal muscle fibers. Accurate diagnosis is complicated by symptomatic overlap with other disorders. One of the earliest symptoms to manifest clinically is peripheral limb weakness, which becomes progressively more severe over time. Specifically, asymmetric right shoulder weakness is an idiosyncratic hallmark of NLSD enabling it to be distinguished from myopathies arising from alternative muscular disorders. NLSD is often diagnosed by the presence of lipid inclusions within leukocytes (Jordan’ Anomaly), which can be detected using histochemical and electron microscopy. Image B shows the characteristic lipid accumulation in red blood cells, in a NLSD patient, as compared to a normal individual (Image A). Classically, NLSD is associated with myopathy and can, in some cases, be linked with icthyosis. Therefore, with these symptoms or diagnosis, it is likely that the patient could and would be diagnosed with NLSD. Although lipid accumulation is most prominent in  myocytes, hepatocytes, and granulocytes, other tissues displayed elevated deposits as well. For the purpose of diagnosis, MRIs have been used to identify large fat deposits within muscle tissue.