Rapid Weight Gain in First Three Months of Life Hard on Lungs

More early nutritional child abuse.

Almost half of children have wheezing in the first years of life, as reported by Martinez and colleagues in the January 19, 1995, issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Rapid weight gain in infancy has been linked with wheezing at age 3 years, according to Taveras and colleagues in the May 2008 issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. However, the effect of weight gain specifically in the first 3 months of life on the incidence of wheezing is not known.

This prospective birth cohort study of healthy infants, described by Katier and colleagues in the 2004 issue of the European Journal of Epidemiology, assesses whether rapid growth in the first 3 months of life is associated with wheezing in the first year of life, wheezing-related consultation in the first 5 years, and lung function at age 5 years.

Study Synopsis and Perspective

Regardless of what a baby weighs at birth, rapid weight gain in the first three months of life raises the risk for wheezing illnesses by age one and lower lung function at age five, a new study from the Netherlands shows.

Stop overfeeding the kids!