Growth of breast and artificially fed infants up to 6 moi ofage

Abstract

Monitoring growth of infants is extremely important to detect malnutrition and/or ilness that the first sign is the slowing down of the rate of growth. Considering that the kind of milk provided to the children may interfere in this process this research is aimmed at comparing the growth of breast and artificially fed infants up to the age of 6 months The weight and Iength of 365 infants bom with birthweight >2500 g in an agro-industrial town in the State of São Paulo (Brazil) were studied. For this research we took two groups: one with children weaned before 2 months and the other with those that were breast fed up to 6 months of age. The 10th, 50th and 90th centile for weight and Iength were calculated according to age and sex, and then smoothed by the H3H3H method Graphically they were compared with the NCHS reference data Children fed with breast milk showed to be heavier than the artificially fed children and the NCHS data. On the other hand the length of both breast fed and bottle fes infants were shorter than the NCHS