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Breastfeeding 'benefits girls more than boys'

02/06/2008

Breastfeeding provides girls with more protection from respiratory infections than it does boys, new research suggests.

Previous studies have shown the protective effects of breastfeeding but the latest study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Children's Centre claims there could be variations to them between the sexes.

They studied 119 premature babies in Buenos Aires through their first year of life.

Their findings, published in the journal Pediatrics, revealed that breastfeeding not only offered more protection to girls than boys, but also that formula-fed girls had the highest risk for severe respiratory infections.

Breastfeeding did not appear to affect the number of infections, but rather their severity and the need for hospitalisation.

This suggests that breast milk does not prevent a baby from getting an infection, but helps a baby cope with an infection better.

"In light of these results, we are starting to think that milk does not directly transfer protection against lung infections but instead switches on a universal protective mechanism, already in the baby, that is for some reason easier to turn on in girls than in boys," said senior investigator Dr Fernando Polack, an infectious disease specialist at Hopkins Children's.