Original ArticleBreastfeeding Protects against Current Asthma up to 6 Years of Age
Section snippets
Methods
The New Zealand Asthma and Allergy Cohort Study was established in Christchurch and Wellington in 1997 as a large prospective birth cohort to investigate risk factors for the development of asthma. Ethics approval for the study was obtained from the Wellington and Canterbury Regional Ethics Committees. Full details of the cohort, including assembly, demographics, and methodology, have been published elsewhere.13
Recruitment took place in Christchurch and Wellington between 1997 and 2001.
Results
A total of 1105 children were enrolled before birth. Questionnaires were completed for 1064 children at 3 months (96.3%), 1011 at 15 months (91.5%), 1011 at 2 years (91.5%), 1007 at 3 years (91.1%), 986 at 4 years (89.2%), 990 at 5 years (89.6%), and 920 (83.3%) at 6 years, with complete data available to 6 years for 892 (80.7%) children. Key characteristics and the prevalence of outcomes of those for whom there were complete breastfeeding data are listed in Table I.
Discussion
Our results show that breastfeeding, particularly exclusive breastfeeding, continued to protect against current asthma from 2 to 6 years of age. Although the degree of protection for each month of exclusive breastfeeding across the whole cohort decreased from 21% at 15 months3 to around 9% at 6 years, it is important to stress the magnitude of these findings. For instance, if every infant in this cohort had been exclusively breast fed for 6 months, as is currently recommended by the World
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Funded by grants from the Health Research Council of New Zealand, the Child Health Research Foundation, the Canterbury Medical Research Foundation, the Asthma Research Foundation of New Zealand (Christchurch), and the David and Cassie Anderson Bequest (Wellington). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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List of members of the New Zealand Asthma and Allergy Cohort Study Group is available at www.jpeds.com (Appendix).