Original ArticleDoes Breastmilk Influence the Development of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia?
Section snippets
Methods
The German Neonatal Network studies the long-term effects of genetic, clinical, and social risk factors as well as center specific treatment strategies. In 2013, 48 centers in Germany (Appendix; available at www.jpeds.com) prospectively collected clinical data for this study. Data quality was maintained by yearly on-site monitoring. We restricted our analysis to infants from 22+0 to 31+6 weeks of gestation who were discharged alive.
Our study was not designed to evaluate the influence of
Results
A total of 1433 VLBW infants with a gestational age of less than 32 weeks were discharged in 2013. The number of infants included in each center varied from 4-113. Only 2 centers contributed less than 10 infants, most centers between 30 and 60 infants, and 5 centers contributed more than 80 infants. Rates of exclusively formula-fed infants varied from 0%-49%, and rates of exclusively breastmilk-fed infants from 0%-75% within the participating centers. Furthermore, 239/1433 (17%) received no
Discussion
Exclusive breastmilk feeding was associated with a lower risk of BPD as well as NEC and ROP after controlling for known risk factors. Results for BPD, NEC, and ROP remained significant after adjusting for multiple testing. Like Schanler et al,5 we found a reduced rate of BPD in the group of exclusively breastmilk-fed infants. Schanler et al5 and O'Connor et al8 used the same definition for BPD as we used. However, Schanler et al5 included only infants whose mothers intended to breastfeed. They
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GNN is funded by the German Ministry for Education and Research (01ER0805 and 01ER1501). The authors declare no conflicts of interest.
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List of GNN study group members is available at www.jpeds.com (Appendix).