28 days of breast-feeding boosts preemies' brains, study finds

cbsnews.com

Premature babies fed more breast milk in the first 28 days of life have better brain development by the time their original birth date arrives, and see benefits to IQ and memory skills later in childhood, a new study suggests.

Researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston followed 180 babies born before the 30th week of pregnancy, from birth up to age 7. (Full-term is 39 or 40 weeks.) The babies who received more breast milk within the first 28 days of life while they were being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) had increased brain development in certain key areas by the time their original due date arrived, and when measured again later in childhood.

Other studies have shown that breast milk is linked to better health in babies, but the new study offered additional information, said lead author Dr. Mandy Brown Belfort, a researcher and physician in the department of pediatric newborn medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Belfort told CBS News, "We had much longer-term information about the baby's developmental outcomes than other studies done in preterm populations, especially recent studies. And the other difference is that we had MRI scans done on all of the babies, both at term equivalent -- their due date if they hadn't been born early -- but also at 7 years old."

The impact wasn't just detected in MRIs; it was apparent in higher performance on a range of skills tested when the children got older.

"The IQs were higher in babies who had been fed more milk in the NICU during the first month after they born. There is a relationship, a correlation, between volume in certain regions of the brain when the baby reaches their due date and how they'll do later on."

Specifically, the authors said the premature babies who received more breast milk had "larger deep nuclear gray matter volume, an area important for processing and transmitting neural signals to other parts of the brain." By age 7, they performed better in tests of IQ, math skills, language, reading, working memory, attention and motor function.