A CLINICAL AND IMMUNOLOGICAL COMPARATIVE STUDY ON 522 BREAST-FED CHILDREN

Until now, there have been various studies concerning bottle-fed and breast-fed children. Prevalence of allergic manifestations like eczema and asthma among bottle-fed children is much higher than healthy controls. In this study, we found that respiratory infection for breast-fed children was 3.1%, whereas in bottle-fed children it was 25.1%for gut disorders, 9.2% in breast-fed vs.13.1 % for bottle-fed children eczema 22.9% in breast fed and 33.3% in bottle-fed children while asthma was 14.5% in breast-fed and 26% in bottle-fed children. We conclude that prevalence of respiratory, allergic and GI tract infections are much higher in bottle-fed infants than in breast-fed ones. This is somewhat in contradiction to that of American and European reports.