Early study looked at newborns who were losing weight
MONDAY, May 13 (HealthDay News) -- Giving small amounts of infant formula to newborns who experience significant weight loss can increase the length of time that they are breast-fed, according to a new study.
New mothers do not immediately produce high volumes of milk and their babies can lose weight during this period, said the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco.
"Many mothers develop concerns about their milk supply, which is the most common reason they stop breast-feeding in the first three months," study author Dr. Valerie Flaherman, an assistant professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics, said in a university news release.
"But this study suggests that giving those babies a little early formula may ease those concerns and enable them to feel confident continuing to breast-feed," added Flaherman, who also is a pediatrician at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital.
Flaherman and her colleagues looked at 40 full-term newborns between 24 and 48 hours old who had lost more than 5 percent of their birth weight. Some babies received early limited formula consisting of one-third of an ounce of infant formula by syringe after each breast-feeding session. The babies stopped receiving the formula when their mothers began producing adequate volumes of milk, about two to five days after birth.
The babies in the early-limited-formula group were compared to a control group of infants whose mothers tried to breast-feed only.
After one week, all the babies in both groups were still breast-feeding, but only 10 percent of those in the early-limited-formula group had received formula in the past 24 hours, compared with 47 percent of those in the control group.
After three months, 79 percent of the babies in the early-limited-formula group were still breast-feeding, compared with 42 percent of those in the control group, according to the study, published online May 13 and in an upcoming print issue of the journal Pediatrics.
The researchers said their findings need to be confirmed in larger studies, a point also made by an expert who wasn't involved in the study.
"The results of this study are provocative and challenge conventional wisdom," Dr. James Taylor, medical director for the Breastfeeding may help prevent children from developing ADHD (attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) later in life, according to a new study.The research was conducted by a team of Israeli researchers and published inBreastfeeding Medicine, the official journal of the Academy of Breastfeeding Medicine.
The scientists, led by Aviva Mimouni-Bloch, MD, of the Tel-Aviv University (TAU) Sackler Faculty of Medicine, wanted to determine whether the development of ADHD might be linked to a shorter duration of breastfeeding.
They compared breastfeeding history and other factors in children between the ages of 6 and 12 who were diagnosed with ADHD at Schneider's Children Medical Center in Israel with data from two control groups of kids of the same age without the disorder.
One of the control groups consisted of healthy children whose brother or sister had ADHD - this group was considered as having a similar genetic background and environment as the research group.
The other group was made up of kids who were consulted at the clinic and were not suspected of having the neurological disorder.
The mothers were asked to complete a questionnaire which sought information about their educational, psychosocial, medical status, pregnancy and perinatal details.
The researchers looked at whether the mother breastfed exclusively, whether she breastfed and gave formula, or whether she only gave formula when the child was 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, and 1 year old.
Kids who had ADHD were less likely to have been breastfed at 3 and 6 months of age than the children without the disorder, according to the results.
Only 43% of ADHD kids were breastfed at three months of age and just 29% were breastfed when they were 6 months old, the researchers explained.
Results showed that 69% of the siblings group and 73% of the other control group were breastfed when they were 3 months old, and at six months of age, 50% of the siblings group and 57% of the other group were breastfed.
Ruth Lawrence, MD, Editor-in-Chief of Breastfeeding Medicine and Professor of Pediatrics, University of Rochester School of Medicine, said:
"Breastfeeding has been shown to have a positive impact on child development, good health, and protection against illness. Now, another possible benefit of breastfeeding for three months and especially six months or longer has been identified. This study opens another avenue of investigation in the prevention of ADHD."
The authors concluded:
"Whether the lesser exposure to breastfeeding in ADHD children is causally associated with ADHD or, on the contrary, a consequence of early abnormalities of feeding behavior at the breast cannot be determined from the current study.
We speculate that prevention, at least partial, of ADHD may be added to the list of the multiple biological advantages of human milk feeding."
University of Washington Medical Center's Newborn Nursery, said in the news release.///////////////////////////////
