Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries

The health benefits of exclusive breastfeeding are well-known, but the relative detrimental impacts of other foods on infant health are unknown. Because infants in developing countries are fed a wide range of food, quantifying the burden of these diverse feeding practices on infant health is essenti...

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Main Authors:	Yarnoff, Benjamin O., Allaire, Benjamin T., Detzel, Patrick
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2013
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3864186/

id	pubmed-3864186
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-38641862014-01-07 Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries Yarnoff, Benjamin O. Allaire, Benjamin T. Detzel, Patrick Pediatrics The health benefits of exclusive breastfeeding are well-known, but the relative detrimental impacts of other foods on infant health are unknown. Because infants in developing countries are fed a wide range of food, quantifying the burden of these diverse feeding practices on infant health is essential for public health policy. We used data from the Demographic Health Survey from 20 developing countries over multiple years to examine the independent association of six different types of food (exclusive breastfeeding, non-exclusive breastfeeding, infant formula, milk liquids, non-milk liquids, and solid foods) with five measures of infant health (length, weight, diarrhea, fever, and cough). We estimated associations with regression analysis, controlling for confounding factors with infant, mother, and household factors and community-year fixed effects. We used these estimates in a simulation model to quantify the burden of different combinations of food on infant health. We show that for an infant younger than 6 months old, following current guidelines and exclusively breastfeeding instead of giving the infant solid foods may increase length by 0.75 cm and weight by 0.25 kg and decrease diarrhea, fever, and cough prevalence by 8, 12, and 11%, respectively. We found that the burden on infant health of some feeding practices is less than others. Although all other feeding practices are associated with worse health outcomes than exclusive breastfeeding, breastfeeding supplemented with liquids has a lower burden on infant health than solid foods and infant formula has a lower burden than milk or non-milk liquids as measured by four of five health metrics. Providing specific quantified burden estimates of these practices can help inform public health policy related to infant feeding practices. Frontiers Media S.A. 2013-09-04 /pmc/articles/PMC3864186/ /pubmed/24400267 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fped.2013.00021 Text en Copyright © 2013 Yarnoff, Allaire and Detzel. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Yarnoff, Benjamin O. Allaire, Benjamin T. Detzel, Patrick
spellingShingle	Yarnoff, Benjamin O. Allaire, Benjamin T. Detzel, Patrick Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries
author_facet	Yarnoff, Benjamin O. Allaire, Benjamin T. Detzel, Patrick
author_sort	Yarnoff, Benjamin O.
title	Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries
title_short	Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries
title_full	Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries
title_fullStr	Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries
title_full_unstemmed	Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries
title_sort	associations between infant feeding practices and length, weight, and disease in developing countries
description	The health benefits of exclusive breastfeeding are well-known, but the relative detrimental impacts of other foods on infant health are unknown. Because infants in developing countries are fed a wide range of food, quantifying the burden of these diverse feeding practices on infant health is essential for public health policy. We used data from the Demographic Health Survey from 20 developing countries over multiple years to examine the independent association of six different types of food (exclusive breastfeeding, non-exclusive breastfeeding, infant formula, milk liquids, non-milk liquids, and solid foods) with five measures of infant health (length, weight, diarrhea, fever, and cough). We estimated associations with regression analysis, controlling for confounding factors with infant, mother, and household factors and community-year fixed effects. We used these estimates in a simulation model to quantify the burden of different combinations of food on infant health. We show that for an infant younger than 6 months old, following current guidelines and exclusively breastfeeding instead of giving the infant solid foods may increase length by 0.75 cm and weight by 0.25 kg and decrease diarrhea, fever, and cough prevalence by 8, 12, and 11%, respectively. We found that the burden on infant health of some feeding practices is less than others. Although all other feeding practices are associated with worse health outcomes than exclusive breastfeeding, breastfeeding supplemented with liquids has a lower burden on infant health than solid foods and infant formula has a lower burden than milk or non-milk liquids as measured by four of five health metrics. Providing specific quantified burden estimates of these practices can help inform public health policy related to infant feeding practices.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2013
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3864186/
_version_	1612038689149419520

Associations between Infant Feeding Practices and Length, Weight, and Disease in Developing Countries

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