418 - Increased Breastfeeding Proportion is Associated with Improved Gross Motor Skills at 3-5 Years of Age

Poster Number: 418
Publication Number: 418.301

Erica D'Souza, New York Medical College, Leonia, NJ, United States; Rutvi Vyas, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Michaela D. Sisitsky, Florida International University, Miami, FL, United States; Ryan J. Larsen, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States; Borjan Gagoski, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States; Jonathan Litt, Harvard Medical School/Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, United States; John Lasekan, Abbott Nutrition, Columbus, OR, United States; Brad Sutton, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Urbana, IL, United States; Matthew J. Kuchan, Abbott Laboratories, Columbus, OH, United States; Patricia Ellen Grant, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Yangming Ou, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, United States; Sarah U. Morton, Boston Children's Hospital/Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States

Background: Breastmilk is the preferred food for infants. Breastmilk provides key nutrients and bio-active factors that contribute to infant neurodevelopment, and maternal-child interactions that occur during breastfeeding have been also shown to be beneficial. Optimizing maternal nutrition could provide further benefit to psychomotor outcomes at school age and have lasting implications for health and outcomes. However, our understanding of how specific nutrients impact infant development remains incomplete.

Objective: Our retrospective cohort study aims to determine if breastmilk nutrient contents mediate any relationships between breastfeeding extent and psychomotor outcomes.

Design/Methods: Breastfeeding proportion at 3 months of age and neurodevelopmental outcomes at 3-5 years of age were recorded for 33 typically-developing term newborns born after uncomplicated pregnancies. Association between categorical breastfeeding proportion and neurodevelopmental outcome scores were determined for the cohort using a Spearman correlation, with and without the inclusion of parental demographics, such as education and reading levels. Vitamin E and carotenoid levels were determined in breastmilk samples from 14 of the mothers. Association between nutrient levels and outcome scores were determined using Spearman correlation.

Results: In an unadjusted model, there was no relationship between breastfeeding proportion and neurodevelopmental outcome scores. After inclusion of parental education and income as covariates, breastfeeding level was positively correlated with problem solving and gross motor skill scores. Motor skill scores were positively correlated with breastmilk contents of total α-tocopherol (Spearman coefficient 0.88, p-value=0.02), translutein (0.98, p-value=0.0007), total lutein (0.92, p-value=0.01), and zeaxanthin (0.93, p-value=0.0068). Problem solving skills were negatively correlated with the levels of the RSR enantiomer of α-tocopherol (-0.86, p-value = 0.03).Conclusion(s): Higher exposure to breastfeeding was associated with improved gross motor and problem-solving skills at 3-5 years of age. Breastmilk contents of total α-tocopherol and carotenoids were positively correlated with motor skills, indicating that optimizing maternal diet could improve the neurodevelopment of offspring. Therefore, this potential relationship is worthy of further investigation.
Erica D'Souza CV 2022CV 2022 .pdf
Table 2: Correlation between Breastfeeding Category and Questionnaire ScoreA summary of the statistically significant correlations between breastfeeding percentage and neurodevelopmental questionnaire scores.