>I looked at this a while ago Heather. From memory it suffers from 
>comparing never vs ever breastfed (it's quite a difficult paper to 
>read and the methods are not very clear). And they selectively cite 
>from the PROBIT study.
>Karleen Gribble
>Australia


Thanks, Karleen, but it is a newly published study, apparently, and 
the (not very clear) article I linked to states "For each sample, the 
researchers sought answers to two basic questions: Was at least one 
child breast-fed and, if so, what was the duration of breast-feeding?"

The researchers looked at children aged 4 to 14 years old and some of 
the measures examined included aspects which you would not really 
expect bf to have a measurable impact - hyperactivity and digit 
recognition???

Some of the report is hard to understand:

"Some examples of differing benefits: Breast-feeding's beneficial 
influence on BMI decreased by 66 percent between siblings across 
families and siblings within families. The magnitude of the 
beneficial effects of breast-feeding for math, reading, vocabulary 
and intelligence declined by between 69 and 29 percent, respectively, 
when comparing data across families to data from within families."

Er...well, that's as clear as mud:( :( ....but if bf makes a 29 per 
cent difference (whatever that means....) between siblings,  then 
that's pretty significant, isn't it?

(A kind lactetter has just forwarded me the whole paper so I will 
look at it properly)

Heather Welford Neil
NCT bfc, tutor, UK
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