Well, sigh, didn't know if anyone has seen this. Wow, just love the last
paragraph.....

From Medscape 

Early Breast-Feeding by Diabetic Mothers May Have Long-Term Effect on
Offspring

 
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Jun 24 - Late neonatal ingestion of breast
milk and the duration of breast-feeding do not appear to independently
influence the risk of overweight or impaired glucose tolerance in the
children of diabetic mothers, according to researchers. However,
breast-feeding during the first week of life may have a more important
influence.

The offspring of diabetic mothers have an increased risk of developing
these two conditions, principal investigator Dr. Andreas Plagemann and
colleagues from Charite-University Medicine Berlin, Germany, note in the
June issue of Diabetes Care. "Recently, we observed that early neonatal
ingestion of breast milk from diabetic mothers may dose-dependently
increase the risk of overweight in childhood."

To investigate, the researchers evaluated 112 children of diabetic
mothers who were breast-fed. Mean age at follow-up was 2.1 years.

"Exclusive breast-feeding was associated with increased childhood
relative body weight (p = 0.011)," the investigators report. "Breast-fed
offspring of diabetic mothers had an increased risk of overweight (odds
ratio 1.98)."

A positive relation was observed between breast-feeding duration and
childhood relative body weight (p = 0.004). Duration of breast-feeding
was also positively related to 120-min blood glucose during oral glucose
tolerance test (p = 0.022).

However, all of the associations with late neonatal breast-feeding and
its duration were eliminated after adjusting for the breast milk volume
ingested during the early neonatal period (1st week of life).

Dr. Plagemann's group hypothesizes that the first week after birth is a
"critical period, when exposure to diabetic breast milk may have a
negative long-term influence on risk of overweight and diabetes in
offspring of diabetic mothers. This might have important practical
consequences."

Diabetes Care 2005;28:1457-1462.






















Margaret M. Sullivan BA, ICCE, IBCLC
Lactation Office
Sentara Virginia Beach General Hospital

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