Developmental Ethology and Cognitive Psychology Group, Centre des Sciences du Goût et de l'Alimentation, Dijon, France.
Early Hum Dev. 2012 Feb;88(2):119-28. doi: 10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2011.07.020. Epub 2011 Aug 17.
The early nursing-sucking relationship is not to be taken for granted in humans. A number of factors can either facilitate or mitigate its optimal establishment on the mother's or newborn's sides. Among these factors, a morphological feature of human mothers' breasts--the areolar glands (AG)--has been identified as potentially important. Three day-old infants display attraction during the presentation of the native secretions of the AG, suggesting that they could influence the newborn's behaviour during breastfeeding. The present study assessed this topic in a sample of 121 Caucasian mother-infant dyads. The areolae of these women were screened during the first 3 postnatal days in parallel with the infant's sucking performance, body weight fluctuations and time to lactation onset. On average, 97% of the women bore AG, 80.2% having 1-20 units per areola and 33% showing AG excreting a visible fluid. The endowment in AG appeared positively linked with neonatal growth after birth and with the speed of lactation onset: infants of primiparous women with lower AG numbers had a lower weight gain than those of mothers with higher AG numbers. Further, it took longer to primiparae with lower AG counts to set on lactation. This study confirms and extends the fact that AG, in interaction with maternal experience, might influence the initiation of the breastfeeding relationship.
人类早期的哺乳吸吮关系并非理所当然。许多因素可以促进或减轻母亲或新生儿双方最佳关系的建立。在这些因素中，人类母亲乳房的一个形态特征——乳晕腺（AG）被认为是潜在重要的。三天大的婴儿在呈现 AG 的天然分泌物时会表现出吸引力，这表明它们可能会影响新生儿在母乳喂养期间的行为。本研究在 121 对高加索母婴二联体样本中评估了这一主题。这些女性的乳晕在产后的头 3 天与婴儿的吸吮表现、体重波动和泌乳开始时间同时进行筛查。平均而言，97%的女性有 AG，80.2%的女性每个乳晕有 1-20 个单位，33%的女性显示 AG 分泌可见的液体。AG 的丰度与出生后新生儿的生长和泌乳开始速度呈正相关：AG 数量较少的初产妇的婴儿体重增加低于 AG 数量较多的母亲的婴儿。此外，AG 计数较低的初产妇需要更长的时间才能开始泌乳。这项研究证实并扩展了这样一个事实，即 AG 与母亲的经验相互作用，可能会影响母乳喂养关系的开始。
