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Breastfeeding counters harm of smoking in pregnancy

By Alison McCook

Last Updated: 2003-05-29 10:03:28 -0400 (Reuters Health)

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - New research suggests that the benefits of breastfeeding on infants' mental development might offset some of the harm posed by smoking during pregnancy.

Research has suggested that smoking during pregnancy can have a negative effect on a child's mental development. But in the new study, 9 year olds whose mothers smoked during pregnancy and breast-fed them for more than three weeks scored similarly on tests of reading, math and spelling as breast-fed children of mothers who did not smoke during pregnancy.

However, among bottle-fed children, those whose mothers smoked during pregnancy scored worse than those born to non-smokers, researchers report in the current issue of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.

"The harms of cigarette smoking seem to be offset by the benefits of breastfeeding," study author Dr. Laura Batstra of the University of Groningen in The Netherlands told Reuters Health.

These findings do not suggest, however, that it is okay for women to smoke during pregnancy as long as they give their babies breast milk, Batstra said.

"Smoking during pregnancy is very harmful to the unborn baby and should always (try) to be avoided," she said. "But apart from helping ... future mothers to stop smoking, they should be encouraged to breastfeed."

Smoking during pregnancy is linked to a number of ill effects, including a higher risk of miscarriage and low birth weight. Babies whose mothers smoke while pregnant are also at greater risk of sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS.

According to Batstra, it is unclear how breastfeeding might help negate the effects of smoking during pregnancy, but suggested that babies may benefit from breast milk's high concentration of a type of fatty acid that has been shown to aid brain development.

Hormones in breast milk may also help babies overcome the negative effects of smoking, she noted.

The benefits of breastfeeding may also extend beyond what's good about breast milk itself, Batstra said, and breast-fed babies might also enjoy psychological benefits from breastfeeding.

Alternatively, women who breast-feed may differ in important qualities from women who don't -- perhaps in IQ or parenting skills -- and these differences might explain why their children did better on the tests, she said.

For the study, Batstra and her colleagues looked at data on 3,162 newborns born at their hospital in the 1970s. Their mothers were asked about breastfeeding and whether they smoked during pregnancy at the time of discharge from the hospital.

When 570 of the children were about 9 years old, they took standardized tests of arithmetic, reading and spelling skills. At that time, the mothers were asked again about how long they breast-fed.

Copyright 2002 Reuters.