No abstract

Despite its unequivocal advantages, breast feeding may be associated with undesired side‐effects. Recently, we have shown an association between exposure via mother's milk to dioxins and developmental defects of the child's teeth. The present study was undertaken to analyze further the association between the duration of breast feeding and the occurrence of dental defects. For this purpose, 2 different populations were selected. The first population comprised 40 children who had mineralization defects in the permanent 1st molars, and their age‐, living area‐ and sex‐matched controls. The median duration of breast feeding was 9 months in the affected children compared to 6 months in the controls. The defects were more extensive after prolonged breast feeding. The second population consisted of 97 children whose mothers had been encouraged to extensive and prolonged breast feeding. Of these children, 24 had mineralization defects. They all had been breastfed longer than 8 months. In both study populations mineralization defects were associated with the duration of breast feeding. The result suggests that long breast feeding may increase the risk of mineralization defects in healthy children, possibly because of environmental contaminants that interfere with tooth development.

No abstract

During a nutritional study of 198 infants, seven became allergic to cow's milk. The seven infants showed acute cutaneous manifestations during cow's milk challenge tests in hospital and six had increased levels of IgE cow's milk-specific antibodies. Neither in the development of the levels of immunoglobulins G, A and M, nor in that of the cow's milk-specific antibodies of these isotypes did these seven patients differ from the remaining infants. Beta-lactoglobulin content and levels of cow's milk-, and beta-lactoglobulin-specific antibodies and of immunoglobulins A, G and M were measured in samples of colostrum and milk from the mothers of the seven infants with cow's milk allergy and from a comparison group (non-atopic mothers of non-atopic infants). The milk of the mothers whose infants became allergic to cow's milk contained less IgA through the lactation: 95% confidence intervals of the groups did not overlap. The difference was most marked in the colostrum. All other measurements were similar in the two groups. This suggests that an infant is more likely to develop cow's milk allergy if the mother's colostrum had a low total IgA content.