Hello!

I posted about this study April 11. after I got home from the seminar about
this study.

Francoise:
> I have no access to the methodology;
> when the babies were considered as: EXCLUSIVLY breastfeed,
> has anyone the information if the babies were really exclusively breastfe=
> d,=20
> with no ABM at all?

Yes, they were really exclusively breastfed. The methodology seems to be
quite appropriate. But lets not be too sad about this. The study found out
that exclusive breastfeeding beyond 9 months increases babys risk for atopic
disease, not before 9 months.

Here is the copy of my mail in April:
I attended today a doctoral dissertation seminar at Helsinki University
Hospital. This dissertation has been talked about earlier at Lactnet, I
think, since it has four topics which has been published in professional
journals earlier.

Maria Pesonen:
Early life determinants of atopy : A 20-year prospective follow-up study on
unselected, healthy newborns

The study can be found at  http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-10-4596-7
There is a link to the whole dissertation which is in English and I think it
is interesting.

These are the topics:
Effect of prolonged exclusive breastfeeding on subsequent allergic symptoms

Prediction of subsequent atopic manifestations by cord serum IgE and family
history of allergy

Inverse association between the retinol concentrations in infancy and
subsequent atopic manifestation

Inverse association between the cholesterol concentration and subsequent
atopic manifestations

Here are a couple of lines from the abstract:

The present study has aimed at defining early-life factors and markers
associated with the subsequent development of allergic diseases in a cohort
of 200 healthy, unselected Finnish newborns prospectively followed up from
birth to age 20 years. Their mothers were encouraged to start and maintain
exclusive breastfeeding as long as it was nutritionally sufficient for the
infant. Consequently, all the infants received some duration of exclusive
breastfeeding, 58% of the infants were on exclusive breastfeeding for the
first 6 months of life, and 18% received this feeding at least for the first
9 months. Of the infants, 42% had a family history of allergy. After the
first year of follow-up, the children were re-assessed at ages 5, 11 and 20
years with clinical examination, skin prick testing, and parental and
personal interviews.

<snip>

In conclusion, prolonging strictly exclusive breastfeeding for over 9 months
of age was not of help in prevention of allergic symptoms; instead, it was
associated with increased atopic dermatitis and food hypersensitivity
symptoms in childhood.

This study hit the main media this week and Imetyksen tuki ry (Breastfeeding
support association) has been busy trying to minimize the damages. The media
got it all wrong by accident or on purpose and was talking about
breastfeeding instead of exclusive breastfeeding. So the public got the
message that it is not good to bf beyond max. 9 months.

I had a day off today and went to the seminar as a representative of
Imetyksen tuki and addressed the meeting shortly. Gasp! I congrat. the
doctorate candidate and talked about the importance of keeping definitions
exact especially in public. Then I talked about importance of the one
finding: 58% of the mothers in study group exclusively breastfed their
babies untill 6 months. The original researcher (MD) supported the mothers
to bf exclusively as long as they could and it worked beautifully. In
Finland, only 10-15 % of the mothers bf exclusively close to 6 months these
days (national survey done 2005). The auditoirium was ful on MDs and I dont
think they really listened or understood what I said and the real meaning of
encouradging mothers to bf, but at least we tried.

Best wishes,

Pia Ruohotie, RN and breastfeeding counsellor

from Helsinki, Finland, Europe

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