母乳餵養或許可以提高子女智商和收入

Breast-feeding has well established short-term benefits, but now researchers have found that its advantages may persist into adulthood.

母乳餵養的短期效益早已得到世人公認，現在，研究人員又發現，這種優勢可能會一直持續到孩子成年之後。

Many studies of breast-feeding are confounded by social factors — in the United States, for example, people of higher socioeconomic status tend to breast-feed longer. But the population in this study covered a wide-ranging socioeconomic spectrum of women who breast-fed.

許多關於母乳餵養的研究都受到了社會因素的干擾，例如，在美國，社會經濟地位較高的母親行母乳餵養的時間較長。但是，這項新研究所考察的人羣涵蓋了社會經濟各個階層中進行母乳餵養的女性。

The study, in the April issue of Lancet Global Health, began in 1982 with 5,914 newborns. The duration of breast-feeding and the age when the babies began eating solid foods was recorded. Thirty years later, researchers were able to interview and test 3,493 of the original group.

這項發表在《柳葉刀：全球衛生》雜誌(Lancet Global Health)4月號上的研究始於1982年，涉及5914名新生兒。研究人員記錄了母乳餵養的持續時間和嬰兒開始食用固體食物時的年齡。30年後，當年的那些新生兒長大成人，其中3493人接受了研究人員的訪談和測試。

After controlling for maternal education and smoking, family income, birth weight and other factors, they found that at age 30, compared with people breast-fed for a month or less, those breast-fed 12 months or more had higher I.Q. scores, more years of education and higher monthly incomes.

在對母親的受教育程度和吸菸情況、家庭收入、嬰兒的出生體重和其他因素進行覈驗後，研究人員發現，同樣是30歲，與母乳餵養不超過一個月的人相比，得到母乳餵養至少12個月的人智商得分較高，受教育年限較長，月收入也較多。

Still, the authors acknowledge that this is an observational study, and that many other unmeasured factors could have influenced their results.

不過，作者承認，這只是一項觀測研究，而且許多別的不可測因素也可能會影響他們的結果。

“I don’t want to terrify people who did not breast-feed or who breast-fed for a short time,” said the lead author, Bernardo Lessa Horta, an associate professor at the Federal University of Pelotas in Brazil. “It isn’t only breast-feeding that affects I.Q. and income. But our study does show that breast-feeding is important and should be encouraged.”

“我不想嚇到那些沒有得到過母乳餵養或者母乳餵養時間很短的人，”該研究的主要作者，巴西貝羅塔斯聯邦大學(Federal University of Pelotas)的副教授貝爾納多·萊薩·奧爾塔(Bernardo Lessa Horta)說。“母乳餵養並非影響智商和收入的唯一因素。但我們的研究確實顯示，母乳餵養非常重要，應予以鼓勵。”