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April 10, 2008New Studies Add Insights to Infant Feeding and Obesity Issue |
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From EurekAlert! - Breaking News: On Wednesday, April 9, 2008, a symposium at the American Society for Nutrition's annual meeting at Experimental Biology was held in which noted scientists discussed new infant feeding studies that used methodology such as randomized clinical trials (involving breastfeeding promotion) as well as sibling pairs analysis. These studies may offer new insights into possible associations between infant feeding and health outcomes such as obesity. Maternal factors include maternal health status, maternal care-giving, mother--child interactions or other health-related behaviors of the mother that may interfere with determining the association of infant feeding and health outcomes and the strength of any possible associations. Other study designs such as the randomized clinical trial on breastfeeding and health outcomes in infants in Belarus recently conducted by Michael Kramer, M.D., a pediatrician and perinatal epidemiologist at McGill University in Montreal, provide evidence that research design can have a significant impact on infant feeding study results. In a randomized infant feeding clinical trial, known as the gold standard in research, infants would be randomly assigned to be breastfed or formula-fed; however, such trials are generally not feasible in infant feeding research, since most mothers determine their infant's feeding method. Dr. Kramer randomly assigned hospitals to implement breastfeeding promotion practices and standard care. Beth Mayer-Davis, Ph.D., R.D., professor of nutrition and diabetes researcher at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, discussed findings from her research on infant feeding and diabetes in ethnic groups in a United States population. Please note conference proceedings will be published in an upcoming peer-reviewed journal. For updates on the publication of this conference in the future, please visit www.infantformula.org.
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