Hello all!

This was on Medscape. I haven't had the time to read the real article. You 
can "join" medscape free of charge to view other article reviews.

I wonder if they differentiated from Type I and Type II diabetes or if they 
controlled for family diet when looking at a 2 year old's weight. It would 
also be interesting to see how the researchers defined "exclusive" 
breastfeeding.

Read on:

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.

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