Breastfed score higher in IQ testing
Breastfed score higher in IQ testing
Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, May 06, 2008
Canadian study in Belarus
In the largest study of its kind, Canadian researchers following nearly 14,000 Belarusian children are reporting that those who were exclusively breastfed longer score higher on IQ tests and in academic performance in reading and writing.
This is not the first study linking breastfeeding to an IQ advantage, but many observers have not been so convinced. That is because it has been impossible in the past to separate out how much of the difference was due to breastfeeding, and how much to differences in the mothers and the way they interact with their babies.
The Montreal team believes its study, the largest randomized trial ever conducted in the area of human lactation, offers the strongest evidence yet that it is cause-and-effect — in other words, “that prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding makes kids smarter,” said lead investigator Dr. Michael Kramer.
“We still don’t know if it’s something in the milk, a hormone or protein or something that’s not in formula or cow’s milk,” said Dr. Kramer, a professor of pediatrics and epidemiology and biostatistics at McGill University. “Or whether it’s just the physical contact between mother and baby, or the kind of exchanges that occur, emotional or verbal even, during the act of breastfeeding that don’t occur in formula feeding” that might lead to permanent changes affecting brain development.
“I’d like to hope that it’s something in the physical contact rather than in something that the formula manufacturers can manage to put in a bottle. But there’s no evidence for that.”
Despite the findings, Dr. Kramer said, “There are lots of ways you can improve your child’s health and intellectual development. I wouldn’t bet a lot of money that breastfeeding was more important than reading and playing with your kid.”
Psychologist Alan Leschied said the differences in IQ scores were meaningful but not large, and that a standard IQ score “is a pretty solitary thing.”
“It doesn’t accurately predict things like academic achievement, not necessarily. It doesn’t predict vocational success. So you don’t want to overstate wh at IQ scores actually mean,” said Dr. Leschied, psychologist and professor in the faculty of education at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ont.
One of the study’s strengths is its size, “and I think we cannot get much better in terms of methodology,” said Dr. Valerie Marchand, a pediatric gastroenterologist at St. Justine Hospital in Montreal and chair of the Canadian Paediatric Society’s nutrition committee.
The study appears in the most recent issue of Archives of General Psychiatry. Until now, human lactation studies have been hampered by the fact researchers cannot randomly assign women to breastfeeding versus formula feeding. “It’s not ethical or feasible to say, you breastfeed and you don’t,” Dr. Kramer said.
So he and his colleagues evaluated the children in 31 Belarusian hospitals and clinics. Half the mothers were exposed to an intervention that encouraged prolonged and exclusive breastfeeding. The other half had the usual maternity and pediatric care.
A total of 7,108 babies and mothers who visited facilities promoting breastfeeding and 6,781 infants and mothers who visited the “control” hospitals were followed up between 2002 and 2005. Both groups of women were similar in age, socioeconomic status, education, number of other children at home, whether they smoked during pregnancy, birthweight and other factors.
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