Breastfed babies 'better protected'

Mothers wanting to minimise the risk of cot death should breastfeed their babies because it could offer some protection against sudden infant death syndrome (sids, or cot death), Swedish researchers say.

Although doctors are not sure what causes seemingly healthy babies to die in their sleep, scientists at the Institute for the Health of Women and Children in Gothenburg found that babies who are breastfed for four months or more are less likely to die from sids.

"The study is supportive of a weak relation between breastfeeding and sids reduction," Dr Bernt Alm said in a report in The Archives of Disease in Childhood.

Dr Alm and his team asked parents of 244 cot death babies how long they had breastfed and compared the results with the responses from parents of more than 800 healthy babies.

They found that babies who had been breastfed for less than eight weeks had three to five times the risk of dying from cot death than the infants who had been fed naturally by their mother for four months or more.

"It is possible that frequent feeding of the infant, and the resultant closer contact between mother and child, decreases the risk," Dr Alm said.

The cause of cot death, which occurs during the first year of life, is unknown. A campaign to encourage parents to put babies to sleep on their backs has reduced the number of babies dying from sids.

Parents are also advised to stop smoking, make sure their babies sleep on a clean mattress and not to let them get too hot.

Breastfeeding has also been shown to reduce the risk of some infections and allergies.

- REUTERS

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