Goel Malika, Jayachandran Sowmya, Kadam Sandhya J, Sharma Rhythm
Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Franciso, CA 94143, USA.
Deepam Medfirst Hospital, Chennai 600100, India.
Children (Basel). 2025 May 30;12(6):719. doi: 10.3390/children12060719.
Breastfeeding has been positively associated with development of various developmental and cognitive outcomes. Although not fully understood, psychosocial, environmental, nutrients (docosahexaenoic acid) etc., have been proposed as reasons. There is a paucity of studies that have looked at individual language milestones and language milestones associated with school readiness in the age group of 3-5 years old in a nationally representative sample. This study aimed to analyze the language milestones association with breastfeeding in this group of children. The dataset was obtained from the National Survey of Child Health (NSCH) 2022-2023 combined sample. Overall, 22,866 children met the inclusion criteria. Secondary analysis of the NCSCH data was done using multinomial regression models amongst four breastfeeding categories (never breastfed, breastfed less than 6 months, breastfed until 6 months but not exclusively, exclusive breastfeeding) with 16 language variables. The results of the study show that children in the breastfeeding categories (breastfed until 6 months but not exclusively and exclusive breastfeeding until 6 months) had a positive association across many language variables including variables used to analyze school readiness. Individual language variables' adjusted odds ratio and significance has been analyzed. The reference category was never breastfed. The study results support positive association of breastfeeding with language variables. Per our review, limited research has been reported where so many individual language variables have been analyzed in a nationally representative sample across four different breastfeeding categories.
母乳喂养与多种发育和认知结果的发展呈正相关。尽管尚未完全理解，但心理社会因素、环境、营养物质（二十二碳六烯酸）等已被提出作为原因。在全国代表性样本中，针对3至5岁年龄组个体语言里程碑以及与入学准备相关的语言里程碑的研究很少。本研究旨在分析该组儿童中语言里程碑与母乳喂养之间的关联。数据集来自2022 - 2023年全国儿童健康调查（NSCH）综合样本。总体而言，22,866名儿童符合纳入标准。使用多项回归模型对NSCH数据进行二次分析，该模型涉及四个母乳喂养类别（从未母乳喂养、母乳喂养少于6个月、母乳喂养至6个月但非纯母乳喂养、纯母乳喂养）以及16个语言变量。研究结果表明，母乳喂养类别（母乳喂养至6个月但非纯母乳喂养以及纯母乳喂养至6个月）的儿童在许多语言变量上呈现正相关，包括用于分析入学准备的变量。已分析了各个语言变量的调整优势比和显著性。参照类别为从未母乳喂养。研究结果支持母乳喂养与语言变量之间的正相关。据我们所知，在全国代表性样本中，针对四个不同母乳喂养类别分析如此多的个体语言变量的研究报告有限。
