Breast feeding premature babies improves their heart function as adults, study shows

Breast feeding premature babies improves the structure and function of their heart in adult life, a study published in Pediatrics has found.1

Previous research has shown that, in adult life, the hearts of people who were born prematurely have smaller chambers, thicker walls, and reduced function.

Researchers at the University of Oxford, UK, followed up 102 people from an original cohort of 926 preterm born infants who had taken part in a randomised controlled trial of different postnatal milk feeding regimens from 1982 to 1985. In the initial …