Strollerderby : respiratory illness

They Say: Breastmilk Fights Respiratory Viruses Better in Girls

Miriam Axel-Lute — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 19:30:00 GMT

Science gets particularly exciting when it turns up things no one was expecting. Researcher Fernando Polack, working in Buenos Aires investigating how much protection breastmilk provides for very-low-birthweight babies against the wicked metapneumovirus (no vaccine yet developed), was surprised to find stark gender differences in his results:

Girls who were not breastfed had a much higher risk of rehospitalization for respiratory illness than boys, but breastfed girls were almost never rehospitalized. In boys, the difference between breastfed and not was insignificant. (The researchers hasten to point out that there are plenty of other benefits of breastfeeding that still hold true for boys.)

The fascinating part of this is that a gender difference may point to breastmilk's protective properties working differently than previously supposed. Maybe it's not just delivering mom's immunities until the kid gets its own—why would there be a gender difference in that? Could breastmilk prompt anti-viral protection in the absence of exposure to viruses somehow, interacting directly with the baby's developing immune system? (Of course, why would there be a gender difference in that either?) The report from Vanderbilt Medical Center speculates maybe, though they have no idea how.

Sounds to me for now like another thing to throw on the "we don't know what breastmilk is well enough to replicate it" evidence pile.

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They Say: Prenatal Folic Acid Not So Good After All

JeanneSager — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 17:57:00 GMT

Am I the only one who is starting to feel like scientists flip a coin every day to decide what's good for our kids? The latest flip flop hits those prenatal ~~horse pills~~ vitamins every mother tries to force down throughout her pregnancy.

Turns out that folic acid we always thought was so necessary for their development? This week, they're saying we probably should hold off about three months. Stay tuned (these things are subject to change).

The study out of Norway has some heft to it. Researchers followed thirty-two thousand kids over a period of three years and found moms who took folic acid during the first three months of gestation were more likely to have a baby with respiratory issues all the way up to the eighteen-month mark. The kids were also twenty-four percent more likely to land in the hospital because of their wheezing.

Over the years, folic acid intake by pregnant moms has been liked to everything from a decrease in the incidence of spina bifida to a possible decrease in cancer in kids. I've known moms who started taking prenatal vites months before they even began TRYING for a baby because they wanted to have a healthy folic acid build-up in the body. And I'd imagine you'd be hard-pressed these days to find a prenatal vitamin that DOESN'T have folic acid built in (thank you March of Dimes).

So what's a mom to do? Would you say the benefits outweigh the risks? Or should we just stay tuned for the other flip flop to drop?

Image: MLive

Strollerderby : respiratory illness

They Say: Breastmilk Fights Respiratory Viruses Better in Girls

They Say: Prenatal Folic Acid Not So Good After All

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