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Breast
Milk May Fight Hypertension
Babies
fed infant formula grow up to have higher blood pressure than
those given breast milk, new research suggests.
The findings,
to be published Saturday in The Lancet medical journal,
come from the first experimental study of how early nutrition
influences blood pressure, a predictor of heart disease risk later
in life.
Earlier studies
have noted that adults with high blood pressure tended to have
been fed formula as babies. But none took account of scores of
other factors that raise blood pressure, such as a bad diet in
adulthood, stress and lack of exercise.
Experts say
the results bolster the theory that an infant's diet influences
the risk of several diseases in adulthood. Breast-feeding is also
considered better for children's intelligence.
The study
by scientists at the Institute of Child Health in London involved
pre-term babies, who are sometimes not strong enough to suck or
may need a more concentrated formula.
That also
eliminated the ethical problem of experimenting with healthy full-term
babies whose mothers can easily breast-feed exclusively.
``When you
put this together with the two observational studies linking formula
to higher blood pressure in full-term babies, there's a strong
possibility these results would apply to healthy full-term babies,''
said one of the researchers, Dr. Alan Lucas, a professor of pediatrics
at the Institute of Child Health.
Nearly 20
years ago, the researchers randomly divided 216 pre-term babies
into three groups: one received donated breast milk, one received
infant formula made for pre-term babies and the third received
regular infant formula. Each diet, begun within 48 hours of birth,
was used as a sole food or as a supplement to mother's milk, depending
on what the mother wanted to do.
The infants
remained in the study until they weighed enough to go home, usually
after one month. The children then returned about 16 years later
to have their blood pressure measured. There were two comparisons.
One compared breast milk with pre-term formula, and the other
compared pre-term formula with full-term formula.
``Just one
month of one diet rather than another had a major impact,'' Lucas
said. ``We created a situation where the only difference between
them was what they were fed in the first month of life.''
The scientists
found that the diastolic blood pressure reading – the lower Number
– was 3.2 points lower in the teens fed breast milk than in those
given pre-term formula. The systolic reading – the higher number
– was 2.7 points lower. An elevation in either reading is bad.
Within the
formula-fed group, babies on the highest proportion of formula
to mother's milk ended up with the highest blood pressure.
There was
no difference in blood pressure between the groups fed pre-term
formula and regular formula, which contain different nutrients.
The results
were not related to birth weight, the study said.
``These few
millimeters may look small, but it's a large effect,'' Lucas said.
Major American
heart disease studies have found that if adults' diastolic blood
pressure was lowered just two points, the prevalence of high blood
pressure would drop by 17 percent, the risk of heart disease would
fall by 6 percent and the risk of stroke and heart attacks would
drop by 15 percent, he noted.
``The most
likely thing is there's something in breast milk that protects,''
Lucas said.
Identifying
the specific differences in the composition of human milk and
commercial formula that produced the difference in blood pressure
is important for making better infant formula, said Susan Roberts,
an expert at Tufts University's Human Nutrition Research Center
in Boston, who was not connected with the study.
The study
discounted any relation between high blood pressure among teens
and sodium and total fat in the infant milk or formula, she noted.
Reference
Source 99
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