Breastfeeding boosts babies' brain growth

MRI images, taken while children were asleep, showed that infants who were exclusively breastfed for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula or a combination of formula and breastmilk.

Images show development of myelization by age, left to right. Credit: Advanced Baby Imaging Lab / Brown University

A study using brain images from "quiet" MRI machines adds to the growing body of evidence that breastfeeding improves brain development in infants.

Breastfeeding alone produced better brain development than a combination of breastfeeding and formula, which produced better development than formula alone.

A new study by researchers from Brown University finds more evidence that breastfeeding is good for babies' brains.

The study made use of specialized, baby-friendly magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to look at the brain growth in a sample of children under the age of 4.

The research found that by age 2, babies who had been breastfed exclusively for at least three months had enhanced development in key parts of the brain compared to children who were fed formula exclusively or who were fed a combination of formula and breastmilk.

The extra growth was most pronounced in parts of the brain associated with language, emotional function, and cognition, the research showed.

This isn't the first study to suggest that breastfeeding aids babies' brain development.

Behavioral studies have previously associated breastfeeding with better cognitive outcomes in older adolescents and adults. But this is the first imaging study that looked for differences associated with breastfeeding in the brains of very young and healthy children, said Sean Deoni, assistant professor of engineering at Brown and the study's lead author.

The findings are in press in the journal NeuroImage and available now online.

Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-06-breastfeeding-boosts-babies-brain-growth.html

Obesity in Children: Overeating learned in infancy

In the long run, encouraging a baby to finish the last ounce in their bottle might be doing more harm than good. Though the calories soon burn off, a bad habit remains.

 Renata Forste

Brigham Young University sociology professors Ben Gibbs and Renata Forste found that clinical obesity at 24 months of age strongly traces back to infant feeding.

"If you are overweight at age two, it puts you on a trajectory where you are likely to be overweight into middle childhood and adolescence and as an adult," said Forste. "That's a big concern."

The BYU researchers analyzed data from more than 8,000 families and found that babies predominantly fed formula were 2.5 times more likely to become obese toddlers than babies who were breastfed for the first six months.

But, the study authors argue, this pattern is not just about breastfeeding.

Ben Gibbs

"There seems to be this cluster of infant feeding patterns that promote childhood obesity," said Gibbs, lead author of the study that appears in the journal Pediatric Obesity.

Putting babies to bed with a bottle increased the risk of childhood obesity by 36 percent. And introducing solid foods too soon -- before four months of age -- increased a child's risk of obesity by 40 percent.

"Developing this pattern of needing to eat before you go to sleep, those kinds of things discourage children from monitoring their own eating patterns so they can self-regulate," Forste said.

Forste said that the nature of breastfeeding lends itself to helping babies recognize when they feel full and should stop. But that same kind of skill can be developed by formula-fed infants.

"You can still do things even if you are bottle feeding to help your child learn to regulate their eating practices and develop healthy patterns," Forste said. "When a child is full and pushes away, stop! Don't encourage them to finish the whole bottle."

Sally Findley

Breastfeeding rates are lowest in poor and less educated families. Sally Findley, a public health professor at Columbia University, says the new BYU study shows that infant feeding practices are the primary reason that childhood obesity hits hardest below the poverty line.

"Bottle feeding somehow changes the feeding dynamic, and those who bottle feed, alone or mixed with some breastfeeding, are more likely to add cereal or sweeteners to their infant's bottle at an early age, even before feeding cereal with a spoon," said Findley.

The next project for Gibbs and Forste is to re-evaluate the link between breastfeeding and cognitive development in childhood.

Forste has previously published research about why women stop breastfeeding.

"The health community is looking to the origins of the obesity epidemic, and more and more, scholars are looking toward early childhood," Gibbs said.

"I don't think this is some nascent, unimportant time period. It's very critical."

Journal Reference:

1. B. G. Gibbs, R. Forste. Socioeconomic status, infant feeding practices and early childhood obesity†.Pediatric Obesity, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/j.2047-6310.2013.00155.x

Breastfeeding is associated with a Healthy Gut

Early colonization of the gut by microbes in infants is critical for development of their intestinal tract and in immune development.

A new study, published in BioMed Central’s open access journal Genome Biology, shows that differences in bacterial colonization of formula-fed and breast-fed babies leads to changes in the infant’s expression of genes involved in the immune system, and in defense against pathogens.

The health of individuals can be influenced by the diversity of microbes colonizing the gut, and microbial colonization can be especially important in regulating both intestinal and immune development in infants. However, little is known about the potential interactions between the host’s health at a molecular level, their gut microbes, and diet.

The human intestine is lined by epithelial cells that process nutrients and provide the first line of defense against food antigens and pathogens. Approximately one-sixth of intestinal epithelial cells are shed every day into feces, providing a non-invasive picture of what is going on inside the gut.

In this study, the authors used transcriptome analysis to compare the intestines of three month old exclusively breast-fed or formula-fed infants, and relate this to their gut microbes.

Transcriptome analysis looks at the small percentage of the genetic code that is transcribed into RNA molecules and is a measure of what genes are actively making proteins. Concurrently the microbes (microbiome) were identified by genetic analysis.

The results showed that the breast-fed babies had a wider range of microbes in their gut than the formula-fed infants but that their immune systems had developed to cope.

Robert Chapkin from the Texas A&M University, who led this multi-centre study, explained, “While we found that the microbiome of breast-fed infants is significantly enriched in genes associated with ‘virulence’, including resistance to antibiotics and toxic compounds, we also found a correlation between bacterial pathogenicity and the expression of host genes associated with immune and defense mechanisms.”

He continued, “Our findings suggest that human milk promotes the beneficial crosstalk between the immune system and microbe population in the gut, and maintains intestinal stability.”