Dexamethasone and IQ. In the paper “Outcomes at School Age After Postnatal Dexamethasone Therapy for Lung Disease of Prematurity” (New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 350, No. 13, pp. 1304–1313), T. Yeh et al. studied the outcomes at school age in children who had participated in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of early postnatal dexamethasone therapy for the prevention of chronic lung disease of prematurity. One result reported in the study was that, at school age, the control group of 74 children had an average IQ score of 84.4, whereas the dexamethasone group of 72 children had an average IQ score of 78.