ArticlesBreastfeeding and incidence of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus in Pima Indians
Introduction
The last trimester of gestation and the early months of life are critical periods in the development of body size and metabolism.1 Children who are breastfed have a lower weight for their age than bottlefed children.2, 3, 4, 5 Certain patterns of infant feeding have been associated with adult obesity.3, 4 In the first year of life, breastfeeding has many benefits,6, 7, 8, 9 but apart from effects on growth, the possible long-term metabolic effects of the type of infant feeding have not been studied.
Although cow's milk formulas have been implicated in the aetiology of insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM),10, 12 no study has described an association with non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM). Obesity, however, is a strong risk factor for NIDDM, and we investigated the association between infant-feeding practices and NIDDM in later life among Pima Indians. This population has a high prevalence of NIDDM, but IDDM has not been found.13, 15
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Methods
Infant-feeding data on 933 Pima Indian people, born between 1950 and 1978, were provided by their mothers in 1978 as detailed previously.16, 17, 18 Briefly, trained interviewers recorded data about each child from women aged between 15 and 44 years. These data included details about the duration of breastfeeding and time of introduction of bottlefeeding.
741 individuals were examined between the ages of 10 and 39 years as part of a longitudinal study of diabetes.13 Height and weight were
Results
Characteristics of the 720 people included in this study are shown in Table 1. Among those who were exclusively breastfed, formula feeds were started at (median [interquartile range]) 4 months (2–6). Table 2 shows the age-specific rate of diabetes by infant-feeding group. The rate of diabetes increases with age and, within each age group, is lower in exclusively breastfed people. The odds ratios for diabetes from the logistic regression model are shown in Table 3. The odds ratio for the
Discussion
Exclusive breastfeeding for at least 2 months is associated with a lower rate of NIDDM in Pima Indians aged 40 years or less. This effect persists when other well-known diabetes risk factors are taken into account. The infant-feeding data were collected by means of a detailed questionnaire administered by trained interviewers to the mothers in 1978 irrespective of the health status of their offspring and before most had developed diabetes.16, 17, 18 Thus, the infant-feeding data were not biased
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2021, Seminars in PerinatologyCitation Excerpt :Pettitt and colleagues were the first to identify a protective association between breastfeeding and incidence of T2DM in offspring of Pima Indian women with GDM. They reported that Pima Indians between ages 10 and 39 years who were exclusively breastfed for at least 2 months had significantly lower rates of T2DM compared with those who were exclusively bottle-fed in the first 2 months (aOR 0.41; 95% CI, 0.18–0.93).30 In 2002, Young et al. reported the findings of their case-control study, which found that Native Canadian children with T2DM were less likely than sex- and age-matched controls to have been breastfed for at least 12 months (aOR, 0.24; 95% CI, 0.07–0.84).
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