Children who have been breastfed for a long time achieve better cognitive results between 5 and 14 years of age.
- With respect to exclusive breastfeeding, protective associations were stronger in mother-infant pairs whose babies were born vaginally than by caesarean section.
“Duration of breastfeeding is associated with better cognitive development in children, but it is unclear whether this is a causal relationship or a confounder,” said researchers from the University of Oxford in England. This is why they decided to carry out a study to find out if this observed association could be explained by socio-economic factors and the cognitive abilities of the mother.
A link between breastfeeding duration and cognition
To carry out their work, published in the journal Plos One, the scientists analyzed the data of 7,855 only children born between 2000 and 2002. The latter were followed up to the age of 14 as part of a British research called the “Millennium Cohort Study”. In this cohort, breastfeeding women reported the duration of breastfeeding and children’s cognitive abilities were assessed at 5, 7, 11 and 14 years. The cognitive results of the children were compared with the duration of breastfeeding.
According to the results, children who were breastfed longer had higher cognitive scores until the age of 14, compared to children who were not breastfed. “This difference may seem small for a single child but could be significant at the population level,” the authors said in a statement.
Exclusive and prolonged breastfeeding has a protective effect against childhood asthma
In another study, published in the journal Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, a longer period of exclusive breastfeeding is associated with a lower risk of asthma in children. To reach this conclusion, scientists at the University of Tennessee in the United States recruited more than 2,000 mother-child pairs. The women indicated the duration of exclusive breastfeeding and gave information about their child’s asthma. “The results indicate that the longer a mother breastfed exclusively and for a long time, the lower the chances of her child suffering from asthma”said Keadrea Wilson, lead author of the work, in a statement.
