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Growth of exclusively breast-fed infants from a poor urban population
R G Ricco1, C A Nogueira-de-Almeida, L A Del Ciampo
1Department of Pediatrics, Faculty of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto, University of São Paulo, Brazil.
Insights
Exclusively breast-fed infants showed increased weight compared to international standards at six months. While breast-fed boys were longer than bottle-fed boys, both sexes were shorter than NCHS standards.
Area of Science:
- Pediatrics
- Human Growth and Development
- Nutritional Science
Background:
- Infant feeding practices significantly impact growth and development.
- Comparing exclusively breast-fed and bottle-fed infants is crucial for understanding nutritional outcomes.
- Establishing growth benchmarks against international standards is essential for public health.
Purpose of the Study:
- To compare the anthropometric growth of exclusively breast-fed infants versus exclusively bottle-fed infants.
- To evaluate infant growth against National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) international standards.
- To identify potential differences in weight and length at six months of age.
Main Methods:
- Longitudinal anthropometric evaluation of 105 exclusively breast-fed and 61 exclusively bottle-fed infants from 1 to 6 months of age.
- Utilizing a fourth-order polynomial to model individual infant growth trajectories for weight and length.
- Calculating 5th, 50th, and 95th percentiles for weight and length to establish growth curves.
Main Results:
- At six months, exclusively breast-fed infants (boys and girls) demonstrated statistically equal or greater weight than cow's milk-fed infants and NCHS standards.
- Breast-fed boys exhibited significantly greater length than bottle-fed boys, but were shorter than NCHS standards.
- Breast-fed girls showed significantly shorter length compared to both bottle-fed girls and NCHS standards.
Conclusions:
- Exclusively breast-fed infants exhibit superior weight gain compared to NCHS standards by six months, potentially due to combined breastfeeding benefits and pediatric care.
- Growth patterns in length differ between sexes and feeding types, highlighting the need for sex-specific growth references.
- The findings underscore the importance of breastfeeding and consistent pediatric follow-up in optimizing infant growth in developing contexts.
Abstract:
The growth of two groups of infants were evaluated, one of them exclusively breast-fed (105 infants) and the other exclusively bottle-fed (61 infants), and compared with one another and with international standards (NCHS). All infants were evaluated by anthropometry at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 months of age. A fourth order polynomial was adopted for each infant and for each anthropometric measurement in order to estimate individual growth, and the 5th, 50th and 95th percentiles for weight and length were obtained. For the age of 6 months, the weights of breast-fed boys and girls were always statistically equal to or higher than those of infants fed cow's milk or those of NCHS standards. Breast-fed boys presented significantly longer length than bottle-fed boys but shorter than NCHS standards, and breast-fed girls presented significantly shorter length than both bottle-fed girls and than NCHS standards. The greater weight of exclusively breast-fed infants when compared to NCHS standards at six months of age, which differentiates the present study from several other ones carried out in developing countries, was probably due to the association of the beneficial effects of breast-feeding with those of pediatric follow-up.