Infant feeding and development.

Sir—Florey etal. investigated the association between infant feeding and mental and motor development in first born singletons. The study population comprised 846 infants, of whom 592 attended for developmental assessment at age 18 months. The Bayley Scales of Infant Mental and Motor Development were used to assess the child's developmental status. Eight covariates included in the analysis were the partner's social class, the maternal age, height, education, pregnancy cigarette and alcohol consumption, and the infant sex, birthweight, gestational age, and placental weight. They reported confounder-adjusted differences of 3.7-5.7 units in the Bayley mental development index between breastand bottle-fed children.