Enriched formula milks and academic performance in later childhood

Many claims are made for the long term importance of nutritional exposures in early life, but studies that examine the impact of such nutrition on a child’s neurodevelopment often measure outcomes too prematurely for robust assessment and before full development of cognition. Thus, the linked paper by Verfürden and colleagues (doi:10.1136/BMJ-2021-065805) is impressive.1 The researchers tracked 1763 participants in seven randomised controlled trials of novel infant formulas, started between 1993 and 2001, and linked 91% of them to centrally collected, objective, educational outcomes at ages 11 and 16 years.

These “dormant” trials shared similar timings and outcomes and emanated from a single research group, but several differences made meta-analysis impossible; one trial began when the infants were aged 6 months, and not at birth, two studied preterm infants, one studied small for gestational age term infants, and three studied only healthy term infants. Two tested formula milks enriched with a long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LCPUFA), one of the many breast milk constituents with a role in brain development; one tested added …