Study reveals that breast feeding leads to lesser behavioral problems

May 12th, 2011 - 7:41 pm ICT by Aishwarya Bhatt  

New York, May 12 (THAINDIAN NEWS) A new research has identified that babies who are fed breast milk are less likely to have behavioral problems when they are compared with those who are fed with infant formula.

The new research was carried out by researchers from Oxford University, University of Essex, the York University and the University College London. Though similar studies have been carried out in the past, the new study was much bigger in terms of scale compared with the previous ones. About 20,000 mothers and babies were involved in the new study. All the participants were of the white ethnicity.

The researchers collected their data from the Millennium Cohort Study which is still ongoing. The researchers contacted and interviewed the mothers when their babies were nine months old. From then on, the researchers received information from the mothers at two-year intervals. Among the traits that the researchers asked the mothers to look out for in the children were conduct problems, anxiety and hyperactivity.

After the study, the researchers identified that before reaching the age of five years, only four percent of children who were breastfed for at least four months showed signs of behavioral problems. Among those who were fed with infant formula, 16 percent of the babies showed tendency to have behavioral problems.

The study was published in the journal Archives of Disease in Childhood.

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