Vitamin A status in a sample of pregnant and lactating women living in several representative regions of Congo was assessed and compared between August and September 2004. This survey was conducted using a randomized two-stage cluster-sampling method with stratification on 90 clusters, each consisting of at least 15 women. Vitamin A status was determined in a total of 1,054 individuals, using t...

OBJECTIVE To quantify vitamin A levels in mature milk of 196 nursing women who were treated at the Maternity School of Rio de Janeiro and to evaluate its correlation with sociodemographic variables and degree of nutrition knowledge. METHODS To quantify retinol concentrations, 10 mL of mature milk were collected by manual expression of one breast, 2 hours after the last feed, in the morning pe...

Weaning is a transition in early development with major implications for infant survival and well-being, and for maternal lifetime reproductive success. The particular strategy a primate mother adopts in rearing her offspring represents a negotiation between her ability to invest and her need to invest, and can be considered adaptive and influenced by biological and social factors. Any investig...

BACKGROUND Exposure of lactating women to environmental cigarette smoke may increase cotinine in breast milk, which in turn may reduce the volume of milk and the duration of breastfeeding. OBJECTIVES To assess the relationship between exposure to environmental cigarette smoke and breastfeeding behavior. MATERIALS AND METHODS This prospective cohort study was conducted on 290 mothers in Babo...

Breast milk provides adequate nutrients during the first 6 months of life. However, there are some reports of zinc deficiency in breastfed infants. This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of zinc deficiency in infants aged 4-6 months and the associated factors. Healthy infants aged 4-6 months and their mothers were enrolled. They were classified by feeding types as breastfed (BF), ...

After reading the title of this chapter you might conclude that this is an odd area of investigation, maybe even trivial to human behavior. The sense of smell is given a great deal of importance in non-human animal interactions, including parent-offspring relationships and mating. Often when we think of odors we think of something unpleasant or something to be avoided. However, the sense of sme...

BACKGROUND It is well accepted that reduced foetal growth and development resulting from maternal malnutrition are associated with a number of chronic conditions in later life. On the other hand such generation-transcending effects of over-nutrition and of high-protein consumption in pregnancy and lactation, a proven fact in all developed societies, are widely unknown. Thus, we intended to desc...