Abstract
Breast-feeding and human milk are beneficial for both mothers and their children. This retrospective study aimed to clarify whether differences in feeding mode influence infant weight gain in the first month of life. We analyzed the pregnancy charts of 422 women who delivered at a birthing center in rural Japan between August 1998 and September 2007. The inclusion criteria were low-risk, full-term pregnancy (duration, 37–42 weeks), spontaneous vaginal delivery, and a healthy infant (1 min Apgar score of ≥8) who underwent a health check-up at 1 month postpartum. The subjects were classified into three groups on the basis of feeding modes: exclusive breast-feeding group (28.9%), mixed-feeding group (55.9%) and exclusive formula-feeding group (15.2%). The weight gain/day was 39.7±9.3 g (range, 18.5–67.4 g), 39.5±9.4 g (range, 13.8–64.5 g) and 39.0±9.5 g (range, 14.4–65.3 g) in the exclusive breast-feeding, mixed-feeding and exclusive formula-feeding groups, respectively. Apart from the rate of maternal smoking, which was lower in the exclusive breast-feeding group, no other significant differences were observed among the three groups. This study revealed that there were no differences in weight gain among infants raised exclusively on breast milk and those raised exclusively on formula milk.
Highlights
The American Academy of Pediatrics [1] and the World Health Organization (WHO) [2] recommend exclusive breast-feeding for infants until the age of 6 months
The mean infant weight and height at 1 month were 4,513.2±451 g and 54.9±1.6 cm, respectively; the mean total weight gain was 1,303.5±325.0 kg, and the weight gain/day was 39.5±9.4 g
The results obtained in the present study were possibly affected by regional characteristics, different attitudes, and/or lack of education on breast-feeding
Summary
The American Academy of Pediatrics [1] and the World Health Organization (WHO) [2] recommend exclusive breast-feeding for infants until the age of 6 months. Breast-feeding has short-term benefits such as the prevention of infectious diseases in infants, including diarrhea [5,6,7,8], respiratory tract infection [9,10,11,12] and otitis media [13,14]. The long-term health benefits of breast-feeding in infants include a lower risk of developing diseases such as obesity [15,16], hypertension [17,18] and type 1 diabetes mellitus [19,20] in adulthood. Gluckman and Hanson [21] proposed the concept of developmental origins of health and disease, which states that unbalanced nutrition in utero and in infancy leads to subsequent disorders
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