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DGReview
Breastfeeding Duration Linked To Adult Intelligence
A DGReview of :"The Association Between Duration of Breastfeeding and Adult Intelligence"
Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)
05/08/2002
By Elda Hauschildt
Duration of breastfeeding and adult intelligence have been linked in two non-overlapping samples assessed using two different measures of intelligence.
Danish and United States researchers observed the "robust" association independent of a wide range of possible confounding factors.
Some of the confounders studied included: parental social status and education; single-mother status; maternal height, age and weight gain during pregnancy; cigarette smoking in the third trimester; number of pregnancies; estimated gestational age; birthweight; birth length and indexes of pregnancy and delivery complications.
"These results indicate that breastfeeding may have long-term positive effects on cognitive and intellectual development," investigators say.
"Nutrients in breast milk, behavioural factors and factors associated with choice of feeding method may all contribute to the positive association," suggest researchers from Copenhagen University Hospital, the University of Copenhagen, the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University in Frederiksberg and the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University in Bloomington.
They conducted a prospective, longitudinal birth-cohort study using these samples: one of 973 men and women and a second of 2,280 men. Participants were born in Copenhagen between October 1959 and December 1961 and were among 9,125 people who took part in the Copenhagen Perinatal Cohort study.
Investigators divided the two samples into five categories based on duration of breastfeeding. Duration was assessed by physician interview with mothers during the one-year paediatric examination.
In the mixed sex sample, intelligence was assessed at a mean age of 27.2 years using the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS). In the all-male cohort, intelligence was measured at 18.7 years with the Borge Priens Prove (BPP).
The researchers report that duration of breastfeeding was associated with significantly higher scores on verbal, performance and full-scale WAIS intelligence quotients (IQs).
Mean full-scale WAIS IQs were 99.4 for breastfeeding of less than one month, 101.7 for two to three months, 102.3 for four to six months, 106.0 for seven to nine months and 104.0 for more than nine months.
Corresponding mean scores for the BPP cohort were 38.0 for less than one month, 39.2 for two to three months, 39.9 for four to six months and 40.1 for both seven to nine months and more than nine months of breastfeeding.
"Unadjusted test scores were lower for individuals who were breastfed for more than nine months compared with those breastfed for seven to nine months," investigators point out.
"However, the adjusted means for the two categories were not significantly different for any of the test scores. Thus, the overall pattern of results suggests that no additional positive effects are associated with breastfeeding after nine months."
JAMA, 2002; 287: 2365-2371.
"The Association Between Duration of Breastfeeding and Adult Intelligence"
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