During this very hectic summer running around with ten assorted
grandchildren, organizing another Barmitzvah, entertaining overseas guests
as well as trying to continue working, this study worked its way further and
further down my in-box. I have just retrieved it and wonder what reaction
there would be from Lactnetters.
Till 1st September, a date to remember, they`re all going back to school.
Wendy Blumfield
This was sent to me by Judy Siegel, the health correspondent for the
Jerusalem Post.
Subject: More Girls than Boys Benefit from Breast-feeding
Source: Johns Hopkins Medicine
More Girls than Boys Benefit from Breast-feeding
Challenging the long-standing belief that breast-feeding equally protects
all babies against disease, research led by Johns Hopkins Childrenıs Center
investigators suggests that when it comes to respiratory infections, the
protective effects of breast milk are higher in girls than in boys.
Following 119 premature babies in Buenos Aires through their first year of
life, researchers found that breast-feeding not only offered more protection
to girls than boys, but also that formula-fed girls had the highest risk for
severe respiratory infections.
The findings, reported in the June issue of Pediatrics, cast doubt on the
theory that immune system chemicals contained in breast milk and passed
directly from mother to newborn are responsible for preventing the
infections. If this were the case, researchers say, both boys and girls
would likely derive equal protection.
In addition, breast-feeding did not appear to affect the number of
infections, but rather their severity and the need for hospitalization,
meaning that breast milk does not prevent a baby from getting an infection,
but helps a baby cope with an infection better.
³In light of these results, we are starting to think that milk does not
directly transfer protection against lung infections but instead switches on
a universal protective mechanism, already in the baby, that is for some
reason easier to turn on in girls than in boys,² says senior investigator
Fernando Polack, M.D., an infectious disease specialist at Hopkins
Childrenıs.
Shortly after birth, formula-fed girls were eight times more likely than
breast-fed girls to develop serious respiratory infections requiring
hospitalization, the study results showed. Formula-fed girls were also more
likely to develop such infections than both breast-fed and non-breast-fed
boys.
The findings, researchers say, are particularly important for healthcare in
developing countries, where antibiotics and other treatments are scarce and
where an estimated one-fourth of premature babies end up in the hospital
with severe respiratory infections.
³When resources are limited, it helps to know that your high-risk group is
formula-fed girls,² Polack says. The findings also suggest that the mothers
of premature girls should be strongly encouraged to breast-feed,
investigators say.
In the United States, by contrast, drugs are readily available to prevent
complications and hospitalizations are less frequent. However, researchers
point out, because these drugs protect against only two of many respiratory
viruses and are expensive, mothers should breast-feed both girls and boys
when possible. Despite gender differences in the levels of protection
against respiratory illness, researchers say that breast-feeding remains the
best nutrition for both full-term and premature infants, regardless of sex,
and that breastfeedingıs benefits extend to brain development and general
health.
For the study, investigators tracked responses to a first infection after
birth and found that breast-fed girls were the least likely to be
hospitalized with an acute respiratory disease. Only 6 percent (two of 31)
of breast-fed girls had first infections severe enough to require
hospitalization compared to 50 percent (12 out 24) of the non-breast-fed
girls. There was virtually no difference in hospitalization for first
infection in breast-fed versus non-breast-fed boys, with 18 percent from
both the breast-fed and non-breast-fed groups developing severe respiratory
infections. This pattern repeated itself throughout the first year of life
and in subsequent infections, with breast-fed girls showing fewer
complications and hospitalizations than both formula-fed girls and
breast-fed and formula-fed boys. In the first year of life, formula-fed
girls continued to have the highest risk for severe respiratory disease and
hospitalization.
If breast milk does indeed trigger a universal - but variably activated -
protective mechanism against multiple viruses, the next step is to figure
out exactly how this mechanism gets switched on and why it is relatively
harder to activate in boys.
³Unraveling this mechanism may one day lead to broad-based therapies that
might be as effective as five or six vaccines,² Polack says, because
vaccines have a narrow spectrum of defense and work only against specific
viruses.
Fundacion INFANT ran the 24-month-long study in Buenos Aires.
The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Other Hopkins
investigators in this study: Guillermina Melendi, M.D.
Other institutions in the study: The National Institute of Environmental
Health Sciences, Instituto de Efectividad Clinica y Sanitaria, Buenos Aires;
Hospital de Pediatria Juan P. Garrahan, Buenos Aires; Maternidad Sarda,
Buenos Aires.
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