Adding fatty acids to baby milk improves development

Supplementing standard infant formula with two fatty acids found in breast milk substantially enhances an infant's mental development, according to a new report.

The study, led by Drs Eileen and David Birch of the Retina Foundation in Dallas, Texas, is the first to directly compare supplemented infant formula with non-supplemented formula (Develop-mental Medicine and Child Neurology 2000;42:174-81). Previous studies have compared standard formulas with mothers' milk.

The researchers enrolled 70 healthy term infants into …