Hello Lactnetters!

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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