There was discussion here on Lactnet a year or so ago on a study that
indicated an increased risk of asthma in children of asthmatic mothers who
breastfed.
An article on the study is on the University of Arizona Health Sciences
Centre website:
>Allergic Kids Breastfed by Asthmatic Moms at Higher Risk for Asthma,
>UA Respiratory Sciences Center Researchers Find
>Feb. 16, 2001
>From: Katie Riley, 626-4829
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Children with allergies who were breastfed by mothers with asthma are at
>increased risk to develop asthma themselves, according to a study by University
>of Arizona Respiratory Sciences Center researchers published in the medical
>journal Thorax this week.
http://www.ahsc.arizona.edu/opa/news/feb01/study.htm
<snip>
An abstract of the Thorax article is online but the entire Thorax article,
which includes a discussion of the ramifications, is not:
> Thorax 2001;56:192-197 ( March )
>
> Factors influencing the relation of infant feeding to asthma and recurrent
> wheeze in childhood
> A L Wrighta, C J Holberga, L M Taussigb, F D Martineza
>
> a Respiratory Sciences Center, Arizona Health Sciences Center and Department
> of Pediatrics and Steele Memorial Children's Research Center, University of
> Arizona, Tucson, Arizona, USA, b National Jewish Medical and Research Center,
> Denver, Colorado, USA
http://thorax.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/abstract/56/3/192
There is a good review of the Australian research on breastfeeding and
allergy/asthma as it compares to this study on respiratoryreviews.com.
> BREAST MILK AND ALLERGIES: PROPHYLAXIS OR RISK?
>
> PERTH, AUSTRALIA-The nutritional superiority of breast milk over formula is
> well established, but another long-debated question--does breast-feeding
> prevent allergy and asthma?--has yet to be resolved. Or has it been? A recent
> study from Australia suggested that breast-feeding for at least 4 months after
> birth does protect against childhood asthma.1
>
> Wendy H. Oddy, MD, of the Institute for Child Health Research in Perth,
> Western Australia, and her colleagues prospectively followed 2,187 children
> from birth until age 6 years to determine whether there was a link between
> breast-feeding and asthma and allergies. She found that breast-feeding for
> more than 4 months was associated with a substantial reduction in the risk of
> asthma at age 6 years.
>
> In contrast, longitudinal data collected by the Tucson Children's Respiratory
> Study and presented at the American Lung Association/American Thoracic Society
> International Conference in San Diego,2 showed that breast-feeding did not
> affect the prevalence of childhood asthma--although in a subgroup analysis of
> mothers with asthma, breast-fed children showed a significantly increased risk
> of developing asthma. However, the authors emphasized the preliminary nature
> of their findings, which will, they said, require confirmation.
http://www.respiratoryreviews.com/novdec99/rr_novdec99_BreastMilk.html
The Tucson study is referenced several times online and comes up when a
search of asthma/breastfeeding is done in search engines. I wanted to
provide more information to a group of moms who were discussing this issue
in an online asthma parent support group, but I felt there wasn't enough
information available online to clarify the relevance of the Tuscon study.
So I contacted the author and received a good answer. She has given me
permission to post this to LactNet.
Here is her response to my questions.
>I'm not sure I can help you understand this complex area since there's a
>lot I don't understand!
>If you would like to see the paper on which that talk was based, it
>appeared in Thorax, vol 56, p 192-7, 2001. It is a complex relation such
>that the only children who appear to have a higher risk of asthma
>associated with breastfeeding have both a mother who has asthma and are
>themselves allergic. There is no way to know whether a child will be
>allergic (half of those with asthmatic mothers are not allergic) until
>they are a few months to years old, so this information can't be used to
>decide whether or not to breastfeed.
>Further, there is real controversy about the findings. The Australian
>studies by Wendy Oddy do not find the same things, whereas German studies
>(von Mutius is one of the authors) do find elevated risk in the same
>situation.
>I'm quite sure our results are real for our population (I spent more than
>a year trying to make them go away!), but there are always limits. There
>are problems in this study with the definition of exclusive BF; the data
>were collected by the MD at the well child visit and were not asked as
>carefully as I would today. (The study was begun in 1980, at which time I
>didn't know much about BF myself.) Some, though likely relatively few,
>would have gotten formula in the hospital. Most of those who fed formula
>used Similac and other standard formulas.
>As to what to tell women, there are many, many benefits of breastfeeding
>and these findings are controversial. Asthma is a very complex
>disease, can be defined many ways, and it's hard to know what the
>observed relationships really mean. It pains me that our findings are
>used by some to promote formula feeding--that is a misrepresentation of
>both the findings and what I very carefully said in the discussion.
>I hope this is helpful. It's almost impossible to argue from studies
>conducted at the population level to an individual case, so even if your
>child does have asthma, I too would have chosen to breastfeed.
>Anne Wright
>Anne L. Wright, PhD
>Research Professor
>Department of Pediatrics and Arizona Respiratory Center
>University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85724
>Phone (520) 626-6686; FAX (520) 626-9465
Ms. Wright's work email address [log in to unmask]
-- Jodine Chase
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