Breastfeeding and Infant Size: Evidence of Reverse Causality
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TLDR
It is speculated that similar dynamic processes involving infant crying, other signs of hunger, and supplementation/weaning undermine causal inferences about the "effect" of prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding on slower infant growth.Abstract:
Infants who receive prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding grow more slowly during the first year of life than those who do not. However, infant feeding and growth are dynamic processes in which feeding may affect growth, and prior growth and size may also influence subsequent feeding decisions. The authors carried out an observational analysis of 17,046 Belarusian infants who were recruited between June 1996 and December 1997 and who participated in a cluster-randomized trial of a breastfeeding promotion intervention. To assess the effects of infant size on subsequent feeding, the authors restricted the analysis to infants breastfed (or exclusively breastfed) at the beginning of each follow-up interval and examined associations between weight or length at the beginning of the interval and weaning or discontinuation of exclusive breastfeeding by the end of the interval. Smaller size (especially weight for age) was strongly and statistically significantly associated with increased risks of subsequent weaning and of discontinuing exclusive breastfeeding (adjusted odds ratios = 1.2–1.6), especially between 2 and 6 months, even after adjusment for potential confounding factors and clustered measurement. The authors speculate that similar dynamic processes involving infant crying, other signs of hunger, and supplementation/weaning undermine causal inferences about the “effect” of prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding on slower infant growth.read more
Citations
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Optimal duration of exclusive breastfeeding
Michael S. Kramer,Ritsuko Kakuma +1 more
TL;DR: Neither the trials nor the observational studies suggest that infants who continue to be exclusively breastfed for six months show deficits in weight or length gain, although larger sample sizes would be required to rule out modest differences in risk of undernutrition.
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Breastfeeding, introduction of other foods and effects on health: a systematic literature review for the 5th Nordic Nutrition Recommendations.
TL;DR: Convincing and probable evidence was found for benefits of breastfeeding on several outcomes and the recommendation in NNR2004 about exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months and continued partial breastfeeding thereafter can stand unchanged.
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Effects of promoting longer-term and exclusive breastfeeding on adiposity and insulin-like growth factor-I at age 11.5 years: a randomized trial.
Richard M. Martin,Rita Patel,Michael S. Kramer,Lauren B. Guthrie,Konstantin Vilchuck,Natalia Bogdanovich,Natalia Sergeichick,Nina Gusina,Ying Foo,Tom Palmer,Sheryl L. Rifas-Shiman,Matthew W. Gillman,George Davey Smith,Emily Oken +13 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigated the effects of an intervention to promote increased duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding on child adiposity and circulating insulin-like growth factor (IGF)-I, which regulates growth.
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Studying noncollapsibility of the odds ratio with marginal structural and logistic regression models.
TL;DR: This work provides an analytic approach to assess the noncollapsibility effect in a point-exposure study and provides a general formula for expressing the non Collapsesibility effect and demonstrates that collapsibility can have an important impact on estimation in practice.
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Effects of promoting longer-term and exclusive breastfeeding on cardiometabolic risk factors at age 11.5 years: a cluster-randomized, controlled trial.
Richard M. Martin,Rita Patel,Michael S. Kramer,Konstantin Vilchuck,Natalia Bogdanovich,Natalia Sergeichick,Nina Gusina,Ying Foo,Tom Palmer,Jennifer Thompson,Matthew W. Gillman,George Davey Smith,Emily Oken +12 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the effects of an experimental intervention to promote increased duration of exclusive breastfeeding on cardiometabolic risk factors in childhood, including blood pressure, fasting insulin, adiponectin, glucose, and apolipoprotein A1.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
WHO Child Growth Standards based on length/height, weight and age
TL;DR: The Box‐Cox power exponential (BCPE) method, with curve smoothing by cubic splines, was used to construct the curves and the concordance between smoothed percentile curves and empirical percentiles was excellent and free of bias.
Journal ArticleDOI
Promotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial (PROBIT): a randomized trial in the Republic of Belarus.
Michael S. Kramer,Beverley Chalmers,Ellen Hodnett,Zinaida Sevkovskaya,Irina Dzikovich,Stanley H. Shapiro,Jean-Paul Collet,Irina Vanilovich,I Mezen,Thierry Ducruet,George Shishko,Vyacheslav Zubovich,Dimitri Mknuik,Elena Gluchanina,Viktor Y. Dombrovskiy,Anatoly Ustinovitch,Tamara Kot,Natalia Bogdanovich,Lydia Ovchinikova,Elisabet Helsing +19 more
TL;DR: The authors' experimental intervention increased the duration and degree (exclusivity) of breastfeeding and decreased the risk of gastrointestinal tract infection and atopic eczema in the first year of life.
Journal ArticleDOI
The effect of breastfeeding on mean body mass index throughout life: a quantitative review of published and unpublished observational evidence
Christopher G. Owen,Richard M. Martin,Peter H. Whincup,George Davey-Smith,Matthew W. Gillman,Derek G Cook +5 more
TL;DR: In this article, a systematic review of published studies investigating the association between infant feeding and a measure of obesity or adiposity in later life was supplemented with data from unpublished sources, which was pooled by using fixed-effects models throughout.
The effect of breastfeeding on mean body mass index throughout life: a quantitative review of published and unpublished
Christopher G. Owen,Richard M. Martin,Peter H. Whincup,George Davey-Smith,Matthew W. Gillman,Derek G Cook +5 more
TL;DR: Mean BMI is lower among breastfed subjects, however, the difference is small and is likely to be strongly influenced by publication bias and confounding factors.
Journal ArticleDOI
Effects of prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding on child height, weight, adiposity, and blood pressure at age 6.5 y: evidence from a large randomized trial.
Michael S. Kramer,Lidia Matush,Irina Vanilovich,Robert W. Platt,Natalia Bogdanovich,Zinaida Sevkovskaya,Irina Dzikovich,Gyorgy Shishko,Jean-Paul Collet,Richard M. Martin,George Davey Smith,Matthew W. Gillman,Beverley Chalmers,Ellen Hodnett,Stanley H. Shapiro +14 more
TL;DR: The breastfeeding promotion intervention resulted in substantial increases in the duration and exclusivity of breastfeeding, yet it did not reduce the measures of adiposity, increase stature, or reduce blood pressure at age 6.5 y in the experimental group.
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