Don’t put off healthy eating

Infants who are breast-fed for first six months appear to gain protection from respiratory illness for the next two years and are four times less likely than babies breast-fed for fewer duration to contract pneumonia. The results of this American Academy of Pediatrics study support the worldwide recommendation that children should be only breast-fed during their first six months.

Genes may affect when Alzheimer’s strikes

A Swedish study of over 11,000 twins over the age of 65 has concluded that while Alzheimer’s disease seems to be highly inheritable, genetic factors may also influence its timing. The study, first reported in General Psychiatry and reproduced in the British Medical Journal, found that Alzheimer’s was associated with genetic factors in 58 to 79 per cent of the cases surveyed. The variation was explained by non-shared environmental influences.

Low birth weight doesn’t mean low IQ

Here’s a positive one for parents of babies with extremely low birth weight. Researchers who have tracked development of children who weighed between 500 and 1,000 grams at birth have found that most of them were able to overcome physical and development challenges to grow up into fully-functioning young adults. In a Canadian study of 149 children born between 1977 and 1982 and who were extremely underweight, has found no significant impairment to their ability to function properly later—a significant finding, given that low birth weight has generally been associated with low IQ.

Anti-depressants may affect lungs

Researchers from the University of California at San Diego report in the New England Journal of Medicine that babies born to women who took anti-depressants like Prozac or Zoloft during their pregnancies were at risk of a serious respiratory problem called persistent pulmonary hypertension. A case-control study found that infants of women who took antidepressants after 20 weeks of gestation were six times at risk of the lung disorder compared to mothers who had not used such medication.

—Compiled by Toufiq Rashid