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From:
Susan Burger <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Lactation Information and Discussion <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 14 Dec 2011 09:07:36 -0500
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So, now that I have purged myself of all those critiques here is my short list:

Problems with this PILOT Study
1) Premise for addressing sleep is based on a study that:
a) used self reported sleep, not actual sleep of infants
b) covered a much older age group of infants
2) By using sleep encouragement as an intervention among a very young group of infants, they did not take age-appropriate development of sleep patterns into account
3) Aggregated results do not show what happens in the group most likely to become obese compared to the group that may not have needed this intervention
4) The average weight for length was LOWER than the median at 33% which means is it possible that:
a) some slow growing infants may have experienced failure to thrive
b) some normal infants may have gained more slowly than they should
c) some overweight infants may have benefited or -- if enough babies failed to thrive -- the whole downward shift in weight may only have been among the normal to slow gainers
5) The drop out rates make it impossible to tell if
a) parents of babies who responded poorly to delayed feedings with slower weight gain may have then responded by becoming overweight because their hunger satiety cues were suppressed and they learned to drink larger amounts of milk than they would ordinarily drink
b)  parents of babies who responded poorly to delayed feedings with a higher than normal weight gain may then have responded by dropping out and continuing to feed higher than normal amounts

I'm sure you can come up with additional scenarios.  It was a PILOT study.  Even the editorial pointed out you can't extrapolate beyond this.  How the issues raised in the editorial did NOT make it into the New York Times is a huge problem in terms of journalistic skill.  I really wish science writers new more about science.


Sigh,
Susan E. Burger, MHS, PhD, IBCLC

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