 | | | | Related Healthscout Videos | |
|
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- What is true about the effects of breastfeeding and low birth weight on babies may be different than doctors have long thought.
Two new studies shed light on both issues. The first one reveals breastfeeding has little or no effect on a child's intelligence, although previous research has suggested it's linked with slightly higher IQ scores.
Text Continues Below
Researchers from the Medical Research Council Social and Public Health Sciences Unit in Glasgow looked at 5,475 children and their mothers in the United States -- the largest study to re-examine the effect of breastfeeding while taking into consideration the mother's intelligence and other things in the child's background.
Results show when you look at breastfeeding alone, it seems to have a positive effect on a child's intelligence. But when other variables were included, lik the mother's intelligence, home environment, and socio-economic status, breastfeeding made less than half a point difference to children's intelligence scores.
The second study finds, besides major disabilities like cerebral palsy and mental retardation, low birth weight may also have something to do with small problems in motor skills and in thinking, learning and memory. And the problems may last into adolescence.
Researchers from Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute looked at 16-year-olds who weighed about 4.5 pounds at birth and were not disabled. The researchers found they are still more likely than the average teenager to have physical and mental problems. Those who were male had nerve tissue damage of the brain on neonatal ultrasound, and those who spent more days on a ventilator as an infant were more likely to have motor problems. Social disadvantages, a lower fetal growth ratio (calculated by dividing birth weight by the median weight for the infant's age), and nerve tissue damage also led to lower IQ scores.
The authors conclude better maternal-fetal and neonatal care can substantially improve cognitive and motor outcomes for low birth weight adolescents who are not disabled.
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
SOURCES: British Medical Journal, published online Oct. 3, 2006; Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 2006;160:1040-1046
|
.gif)
