Influence of early diet on outcome in preterm infants

Despite intensive research in infant nutrition over the past 50 years, uncertainty exists in nearly every major area of practice. A key factor in this uncertainty has been the lack of knowledge on whether diet or nutritional status in early life has a long-term or permanent influence on health, growth or performance. The possibility that early nutrition has long-term consequences in man has been much debated. There have been limited opportunities to perform formal randomized studies on the effect of early nutrition in humans and many studies have been flawed by problems with study design. Infants born preterm are a special group. At the start of our study in 1982, evidence on which to base choice of diet was inconsistent and related only to short-term outcome, and diets available for such babies differed greatly in nutrient content. In this group it was both ethical and practical to conduct a formal, randomized trial of early diet and outcome and the results were clearly needed for management decisions. We have undertaken a long-term prospective outcome study on 926 preterm infants randomly assigned to the diet received in the neonatal period. Surviving children have been followed at 9 months, 18 months and now 7.5-8 years of age. Our findings suggest that human milk may contain factors which promote brain growth or development and also bone mineralization later in childhood. Outcome data from the randomized trials show that a very brief period of dietary manipulation (on average for the first 4 weeks of life) influences later development.