Artificial feeding and hospitalization in the first 18 months of life.

The association between type of feeding and hospitalization during the first 18 months of life was examined among 1,058 infants from Jing-An district, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. Infants who had never been fed with mother's milk were categorized as artificially fed; the remainder were breast-fed. The rate of hospitalization for first episodes of respiratory infections during the first 18 months of life for the artificially fed infants was 18.0% v 11.2% for the breast-fed infants (P less than .01). Multiple logistic regression analysis demonstrated that the adverse effect of artificial feeding on the hospitalization rate for respiratory infections was independent of birth weight, father's education, passive smoking, and any case(s) of chronic respiratory disease in the family. The adjusted odds ratio for the artificially fed infants compared with the breast-fed infants was 2.11. The artificially fed infants were also hospitalized more frequently for gastroenteritis and other conditions, but the differences were not significant.