Relationship of infant feeding to recurrent wheezing at age 6 years

A prospective longitudinal study of infants followed up from birth to six years of age. There were 1246 healthy infants enrolled at birth, 988 of whom had data on both infant feeding and wheezing at age 6 years. Children were classified by atopic status on the basis of skin-prick tests. The conclusion of the authors is that recurrent wheeze at age 6 years is less common among non atopic children who were breastfed as infants. This effect is independent of whether the child wheezed with a lower respiratory tract illness in the first six months of life.