OKLAHOMA CITY – University of Oklahoma researcher David Fields, Ph.D., discovered in 2010 that formula-fed babies of obese mothers had less body fat than breastfed babies, sparking his research into breast milk’s impact on infant health. His latest study, published in The Journal of the American Medical Association, explores how breast milk affects babies born to mothers with gestational diabetes.
“Gestational diabetes is serious,” said Fields, a pediatrics professor at the OU College of Medicine. “Though it disappears after childbirth, it often leads to diabetes later in life for the mother.”
Fields and his team, as part of the Mothers and Infants LinKed for Health Growth (MILK) study, discovered that the breast milk of mothers with gestational diabetes differed from those without it. Babies of diabetic mothers showed faster linear growth and lower fat percentage during their first three months.
“Our findings were surprising,” said Fields. “We expected these babies to gain more fat, but they didn’t.”
Fields’ ongoing research emphasizes that milk is medicine, transferring important health signals from mother to baby through breast milk.
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