Breast feeding and mental and motor development at 12 months in a low‐income population in northeast Brazil

Abstract

The aim of this prospective study was to investigate the association between breast feeding and mental and motor development at age 12 months, controlling for comprehensive measures of the child's socio-economic, maternal and environmental background, and nutritional status. A cohort of 205 infants born during May-August 2001 in a poor area in the interior of the State of Pernambuco was enrolled, of whom 191 were tested at age 12 months with the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II, and in whom breast-feeding status was measured at days 1, 10, 30, 60, 90, 120, 150, 180, 270 and 360. After adjusting for potential confounders, full breast feeding (i.e. exclusive or predominant) at 1 month was associated with a small but significant benefit in mental development (+3.0 points, P = 0.02) compared with partial or no breast feeding. No additional advantage in mental development was found with longer durations of full breast feeding. Full breast feeding at 1 month was associated with improved behaviour for two of 10 ratings tested: initiative with tasks (P = 0.003) and attention (P = 0.02). No association between breast feeding and motor development was found.

Desenvolvimento motor e cognitivo de bebês de mães adolescentes e adultas: estudo longitudinal

“…This result is similar to those obtained by Camarotti et al 18 , in which the vast majority of adolescent mothers continued exclusive breastfeeding only after one month after birth. However, the prolonged breastfeeding of adult mothers did not result in motor or cognitive benefits, similarly to another study 25 . One result of extreme importance of this study concerns the comparisons of scores of babies of mothers studied.…”

Reference curves for the Brazilian Alberta Infant Motor Scale: percentiles for clinical description and follow-up over time

“…A superioridade significativa do desempenho motor feminino, quando comparado ao masculino, detectada aos 14 meses de idade, se diferencia dos estudos prévios 6,7,31 . Os resultados são intrigantes, uma vez que estudos prévios nacionais, em semelhantes faixas etárias, com população gaúcha 7 e nordestina 31 , não observaram diferenças entre os sexos. As distinções entre os sexos podem ser determinadas pelas expectativas do que passa a ser considerado mais apropriado para cada gênero 32 .…”

Cognição e ambiente são preditores do desenvolvimento motor de bebês ao longo do tempo

“…Such possibility was already reported in a previous review study 7,13,25 . Biological factors, despite being frequently mentioned as risks to child development 7,11,26,27 , were not found to influence the regression models in this study.…”

“…Factors posing risks or providing protection -other than economic aspects, physical housing aspects, and toy availability -need to be identified. Specifically, parental practices and knowledge have received little attention from Brazilian researchers [9][10][11] , due to their limited tools 9 and difficulty getting parents to follow their children's routines. The related literature is observed to predominantly have studies focusing on risk factors, rather than investigating protection factors 12 , which play roles to improve the quality of life of children.…”

“…A prevalence of investigations focusing on just one aspect or constraint is also observed to exist, in which researchers fail to investigate how different factors, whether biological or environmental, are combined to interfere in an individual's development path 13 . Moreover, although cross-sectional designs help understand posture acquisition by infants 11,14 , longitudinal studies are limited. Brazil has few crosssectional studies focusing on infants' posture acquisition and its influencing factors 1,8 .…”