Maternal Cigarette Smoking, Breast-feeding, and Respiratory Tract Infections in Infancy:A Population-based Cohort Study

Abstract

This population-based study comprised 192 mothers and their infants; 58 mothers were smokers and 134 non-smokers. At the 18-month infant check-up at the child health clinic, mothers were questioned about the length of the breast-feeding period, both exclusively breast-feeding and overall breast-feeding time. The numbers of antibiotic-treated respiratory tract infections (RTIs) during the first year of life were noted during a scrutiny of records at the district physician's surgery and child health clinic of the Health Centre, and at the paediatric and ENT departments of the Central Hospital. We were unable to find any connection between the duration of breast-feeding and the number of antibiotic-treated RTIs in the infants. This applied to both exclusively breast-feeding period and overall breast-feeding period. Further, it was shown that infants of smokers were affected by RTIs more often than those of non-smokers, the incidence figures being 1.16 vs. 0.76 antibiotic courses per infant and year, respectively. Moreover, infants of smokers were breast-fed for a shorter period than those of non-smokers, the mean values being 3.3 vs. 4.3 months, respectively, for the period of exclusively breast-feeding, and 5.0 vs. 7.2 months, respectively, for the overall breast-feeding period.

Full Breastfeeding Duration and Associated Decrease in Respiratory Tract Infection in US Children

“…There were 2 small studies in Sweden that did not support an association between breastfeeding duration and respiratory illness, one with an outcome of ROM and another with the outcome of number of respiratory tract infections treated with antibiotics. 30,31 The observational study of morbidity by exclusive breastfeeding duration in Belarus also failed to demonstrate increased protection against infectious respiratory outcomes with 6 months of exclusive breastfeeding when compared with 3 months of exclusive breastfeeding followed by partial breastfeeding at least through 6 months. 10 It is unclear why our results differ from those found in Sweden and Belarus.…”

Parental and household smoking and the increased risk of bronchitis, bronchiolitis and other lower respiratory infections in infancy: systematic review and meta-analysis

“…The LRI outcome reported was acute respiratory infection in seven studies [19,23,31,42,61,63,72], bronchiolitis in ten studies [36,48-50,53,55,56,59,64,73], bronchitis in ten studies [20,24,27,28,33,57,66,70,71,76], pneumonia in three [54,60,75], and in 30 studies the type of lower respiratory infection was not specified [17,18,21,22,25,26,29,30,32,34,35,37-41,43-47,51,52,58,62,65,67-69,74]. Studies measured infant exposure to passive smoke either by self-report [17-22,24-28,30-34,36,38-40,42,43,45,47-51,53-57,59-72,74-76], independent observation [23], or by biochemically validated measures of nicotine metabolites such as cotinine [35,37,41,44,46,52,58,73]. Thirty studies [17,18,24,25,29,34,35,38,40,43,…”

“…Studies measured infant exposure to passive smoke either by self-report [17-22,24-28,30-34,36,38-40,42,43,45,47-51,53-57,59-72,74-76], independent observation [23], or by biochemically validated measures of nicotine metabolites such as cotinine [35,37,41,44,46,52,58,73]. Thirty studies [17,18,24,25,29,34,35,38,40,43,46,48-50,52,53,56-62,66-70,75,76] adjusted for the infant's age in the analysis and 46 studies [17-22,24,26,28-35,37-39,43,45-50,52,56-71,73-75] adjusted for other potential confounding variables, such as breast feeding, maternal age, infant gender, allergy status, socio-economic status, and maternal education.…”

Does Maternal Smoking Have a Negative Physiological Effect on Breastfeeding? The Epidemiological Evidence

“…Without stratifying the amount of cigarettes smoked, many studies reported maternal smoking and breastfeeding duration. A large number that observed an association between maternal smoking and a shortened duration of breastfeeding relied on univariate analysis only (3,26,28,41–61). The consistent trend has been between smoking and earlier cessation of breastfeeding.…”