Upper Respiratory tract infection in breast feed baby versus formula feeding

Abstract

Four hundred thirty three children has attending the health center of Jordan university of science and technology for a period between (Nov 1st –Nov30th) 2009.100 of them complaining of upper respiratory tract infection which included in this study . We studied the effect of feeding types on the frequency of upper respiratory tract infection , the children who exclusively fed for the 1st 6 months of life had lower rate of upper respiratory tract infection compared to bottle feeding . A strong association was found for protection against upper respiratory tract infection by breast feeding versus bottle feeding .The collection of data were prospective based on valid questionnaires and methodologies. Our finding supports the hypothesis that predominant breast feeding protecting against occurrence of upper respiratory tract infection , additional large controlled clinical trials are required to confirm these findings and to understand mechanism of breast milk protection .