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07 May 2008
Researchers have found that long-term, exclusive breastfeeding appears to improve children's cognitive development, reinforcing the findings from earlier studies.
The findings were published in the May issue of Archives of General Psychiatry and explained how Michael Kramer of McGill University and the Montreal Children's Hospital conducted a randomised trial of a breastfeeding promotion program involving patients at 31 maternity hospitals and affiliated clinics in Belarus.
Clinics were randomly assigned either to adopt a program supporting and promoting breastfeeding or to continue their current practices and policies.
A total of 7,108 infants and mothers who visited facilities promoting breastfeeding and 6,781 infants and mothers who visited control facilities received follow-up interviews and examinations between 2002 and 2005, when the children were an average of 6.5 years old.
Of the mothers visiting a facility promoting breastfeeding, 43.3 per cent fed their infants only breast milk at age three months, compared to 6.4 per cent in the control group, and they were more likely to feed their infants breast-milk at all ages up to one year.
At age 6.5, the children in the breastfeeding group scored an average of 7.5 points higher on the Wechsler Abbreviated Scales of Intelligence IQ tests measuring verbal intelligence, 2.9 points higher on tests measuring non-verbal intelligence and 5.9 points higher on tests measuring overall intelligence."
Commenting on the results, the authors wrote: "Even though the treatment difference appears causal, it remains unclear whether the observed cognitive benefits of breastfeeding are due to some constituent of breast milk or are related to the physical and social interactions inherent in breastfeeding."
They postulated several theories for the increase in intelligence scores, including the possibility that essential long-chain fatty acids (primarily used to produce hormone-like substances that regulate a wide range of functions, including blood pressure, blood clotting, the immune response, and the inflammation response to injury infection) and a compound known as insulin-like growth factor I (which can regulate cell growth and development, especially in nerve cells), both found in breast milk, could be responsible for the cognitive differences.
They also said the physical or emotional component of breastfeeding may lead to permanent changes affecting brain development and that breastfeeding may also increase verbal interaction between mother and child, which could improve children's cognitive development.
However, the authors conclude: "The consistency of our findings based on a randomised trial with those reported in previous observational studies should prove helpful in encouraging further public health efforts to promote, protect and support breastfeeding."
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