Feeding formula without arachidonic acid and docosahexaenoic acid has no effect on preferential looking acuity or recognition memory in healthy full-term infants at 9 mo of age

Abstract

Preferential looking acuity and novelty preference (a test of recognition memory) were determined by using Teller Acuity Cards and the Fagan Test of Infant Intelligence, respectively, for 399-433 healthy full-term infants at 39 +/- 1 wk of age. Duration of breast-feeding and age of infant at introduction and amount and type of formula were determined by questionnaire. Seventy-four infants (17%) were never breast-fed; another 92 infants (21%) were still receiving breast milk as the milk source at 39 wk of age. There were no differences in visual acuity or novelty preference among the infants when they were stratified by incidence or duration of breast-feeding. The formulas met current Canadian guidelines with > or = 0.7% of energy as linolenic acid, but had no docosahexaenoic or arachidonic acid. The studies indicate that formulas containing adequate linoleic and linolenic acids, without arachidonic or docosahexaenoic acid, impose no measurable deficits in performance in these visual and cognitive developmental tests at 9 mo of age in healthy full-term infants.

Early nutrition, essential fatty acid status and visual acuity of term infants at 7 months of age

“…Visual acuity was measured using both the acuity card procedure and a visual evoked potential method and no differences were observed between the different groups at the ages of 2, 4, 6, 9 and 12 months. Our ®ndings agree with both Innis et al (1994Innis et al ( , 1996Innis et al ( , 1997 and Auestad et al (1997). In their recent study, Birch et al (1998) also found no effect of diet on visual acuity, as measured with the forced choice looking protocol, at different time points during the ®rst 12 months of life.…”

“…In contrast to human milk, most arti®cial formulas do not contain n-6 LCP and n-3 LCP to supply the infant with AA and DHA. The present study, like other studies (Innis, 1992;Innis et al, 1997;Jùrgensen et al, 1996;Uauy et al, 1992), showed that the concentrations of 22 : 6n-3 and other essential fatty acids were lower in plasma and red blood cells of formula-fed infants compared with those of breastfed infants, whereas fatty acids of the n-7 and n-9 family were higher. These differences were more pronounced in the subgroup of infants who received human milk until 7 months of age as compared with the total group of breastfed infants (mean duration of breastfeeding : 16 weeks).…”

“…Besides, even within studies that use the Teller Acuity Card method in term infants, inconsistencies are found. Thus, Innis et al (1994Innis et al ( , 1996Innis et al ( , 1997 used the Teller Acuity Cards in three studies with children born at term. In the ®rst study (1994) they compared the visual acuity of 17 breastfed infants with that of 18 infants fed standard formula at the age of 14 d and 3 months.…”

“…Auestad et al (1997) found no differences between term infants receiving human milk, standard formula, DHA supplemented formula and formula supplemented with both DHA and AA at 2, 4, 6, 9 and 12 months of age. Innis et al (1994Innis et al ( , 1996 observed no differences in visual acuity between term infants fed standard formula and infants fed human milk at 14 days, 3 and 9 months, in spite of lower DHA contents in plasma and red blood cells in the formula group at 14 days and 3 months. Using the forced choice preferential looking protocol, Birch et al (1998) did not ®nd any effect of diet on visual acuity at 6, 17, 26 and 52 weeks of age.…”

Health aspects of fish and n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids from plant and marine origin

“…In these infants, formulas enriched with DHA were found to improve visual acuity and neuro-mental development. These effects disappeared at somewhat later age (Carlson et al, 1993;Innis et al, 1996), but were of longer duration in other studies . An increased occurrence of sepsis or necrotising enterocolitis at enteral feeding with supplemented marine n-3 PUFA cannot be ruled out (Carlson et al, 1996).…”