BackgroundInfant and young child feeding is critical for child health and survival. Proportion of infants 0–5 months who are fed exclusively with breast milk is a common indicator used for monitoring and evaluating infant and young child feeding in a given country and region. Despite progress made since 1990, a previous review in 2006 of global and regional trends found improvement to be modest. The current study provides an update in global and regional trends in exclusive breastfeeding from 1995 to 2010, taking advantage of the wealth of data from recent household surveys.MethodsUsing the global database of infant and young child feeding maintained by the United Nations Children’s Fund, the authors examined estimates from 440 household surveys in 140 countries over the period between 1995 and 2010 and calculated global and regional averages of the rate of exclusive breastfeeding among infants 0–5 months for the two time points to assess the trends.ResultsTrend data suggest the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding among infants younger than six months in developing countries increased from 33% in 1995 to 39% in 2010. The prevalence increased in almost all regions in the developing world, with the biggest improvement seen in West and Central Africa.ConclusionsIn spite of the well-recognized importance of exclusive breastfeeding, the practice is not widespread in the developing world and increase on the global level is still very modest with much room for improvement. Child nutrition programmes worldwide continue to require investments and commitments to improve infant feeding practices in order to have maximum impact on children’s lives.

CHCl 3 solution; b) Calculated from the film UV-vis-NIR absorption onset; c) Measured from the CV; d) Calculated by the equation: E LUMO = E HOMO + E g .

Dystonia is a neurological movement disorder that is clinically and genetically heterogeneous. Herein, we report the identification a novel homozygous missense mutation, c.156 C > A in VPS16, co-segregating with disease status in a Chinese consanguineous family with adolescent-onset primary dystonia by whole exome sequencing and homozygosity mapping. To assess the biological role of c.156 C > A homozygous mutation of VPS16, we generated mice with targeted mutation site of Vps16 through CRISPR-Cas9 genome-editing approach. Vps16 c.156 C > A homozygous mutant mice exhibited significantly impaired motor function, suggesting that VPS16 is a new causative gene for adolescent-onset primary dystonia.

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Reviews of programmes in Bangladesh, Benin, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Uganda, and Uzbekistan sought to identify health policy and programmatic factors that influenced breastfeeding practices during a 10 to 15 year period. Exclusive breastfeeding rates and trends were analysed in six countries in general and from an equity perspective in two of them. Success factors and challenges were identified in countries with improved and stagnated rates respectively. The disaggregated data analysis showed that progress may be unequal in population subgroups, but if appropriately designed and implemented, a programme can become a “health equalizer” and eliminate discrepancies among different subgroups. Success requires commitment, supportive policies, and comprehensiveness of programmes for breastfeeding promotion, protection and support. Community-based promotion and support was identified as a particularly important component. Although health workers’ training on infant feeding support and counselling was prioritized, further improvement of interpersonal counselling and problem solving skills is needed. More attention is advised for pre-service education, including a stronger focus on clinical practice, to ensure knowledge and skills among all health workers. Large-scale communication activities played a significant role, but essential steps were often underemphasized, including identifying social norms and influencing factors, ensuring community participation, and testing of approaches and messages.