Breastfeeding and childhood asthma: systematic review and meta-analysis

Dogaru, Cristian, Nyffenegger, Denise, Pescatore, Anina M., Spycher, Ben D. and Kuehni, Claudia E. (2014) Breastfeeding and childhood asthma: systematic review and meta-analysis. American Journal of Epidemiology, 179 (10). pp. 1153-1167. ISSN ‎0002-9262

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Abstract

Asthma and wheezing disorders are common chronic health problems in childhood. Breastfeeding provides health benefits, but it is not known whether or how breastfeeding decreases the risk of developing asthma. We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies published between 1983 and 2012 on breastfeeding and asthma in children from the general population. We searched the PubMed and Embase databases for cohort, cross-sectional, and case-control studies. We grouped the outcomes into asthma ever, recent asthma, or recent wheezing illness (recent asthma or recent wheeze). Using random-effects meta-analyses, we estimated pooled odds ratios of the association of breastfeeding with the risk for each of these outcomes. We performed meta-regression and stratified meta-analyses. We included 117 of 1,464 titles identified by our search. The pooled odds ratios were 0.78 (95% confidence interval: 0.74, 0.84) for 75 studies analyzing "asthma ever," 0.76 (95% confidence interval: 0.67, 0.86) for 46 studies analyzing "recent asthma," and 0.81 (95% confidence interval: 0.76, 0.87) for 94 studies analyzing recent wheezing illness. After stratification by age, the strong protective association found at ages 0-2 years diminished over time. We found no evidence for differences by study design or study quality or between studies in Western and non-Western countries. A positive association of breastfeeding with reduced asthma/wheezing is supported by the combined evidence of existing studies.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: Unmapped bibliographic data: Y1 - 2014/// [EPrints field already has value set]
Uncontrolled Keywords: Asthma, Asthma: epidemiology, Breast Feeding, Breast Feeding: statistics & numerical data, Humans, asthma, breastfeeding, child, review
Subjects: R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine > RA0421 Public health. Hygiene. Preventive Medicine
R Medicine > RJ Pediatrics > RJ101 Child Health. Child health services
Divisions: Faculty of Arts, Business & Applied Social Science > Department of Young People & Education
Depositing User: Cristian Dogaru
Date Deposited: 11 Dec 2017 12:06
Last Modified: 05 Aug 2020 08:36
URI: https://oars.uos.ac.uk/id/eprint/349

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