Breast milk boosts premature babies' IQ scores

Reuters
Published: Monday, October 01, 2007

CHICAGO - Even the tiniest premature babies should get breast milk while
they are in a hospital's intensive care unit because it appears to boost
their mental development, a study says today.

A second study on breast feeding found that it does not raise the risk that
children will develop tooth decay later in life, as some earlier research
had suggested.

Both reports were published in the October issue of Pediatrics, the journal
of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The premature infant study involved 773 U.S. babies born extremely
underweight -- less than 2.2 pounds -- between 1999 and 2002.

It found that babies in the group given breast milk got higher scores on a
test measuring their overall intelligence at 30 months of age, with the
highest scores showing up among the children who had received the most
breast milk as infants.

Premature infants are fed intravenously in the hospital.

"These findings strongly suggest that, whenever possible, preterm infants
should routinely be given breast milk during their stay in the intensive
care unit," said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of
Child Health and Human Development, which backed the study.

The study on tooth decay came from the School of Medicine and Dentistry at
Rochester University in New York. Its authors said it was prompted by
limited evidence and earlier research that breast feeding -- especially when
it is prolonged -- could raise the risk of getting cavities among young
children.

But a review of a U.S. government database on child health involving more
than 1,500 youngsters found no such association.

There is "no evidence to suggest that breast feeding or its duration are
independent risk factors for early childhood caries (cavities) ... or
decayed and filled surface on primary teeth," the study concluded.

The Ottawa Citizen 2007