Breastfeeding and allergies: time for a change in paradigm?
Bibliographic record
Abstract
For decades, conventional wisdom and much medicalliterature have stated that breastfeeding, in addition toitsnutritionalandsociologicalbenefits,providedanumberofspecifichealthbenefitstotheinfant,includingreductionof the incidence of allergy and childhood wheezing. In2004,KempandKakakios[1]wrote‘Ithasbeenanarticleof faith amongst pediatricians and allergists that breast-feedingisbeneficialforthepreventionofallergicdisease’.Now that paradigm is beingchallenged, as several studiespublished over the last few years suggest, there is nosustained protective effect, or even, that there is anincreased long-term risk of allergy and asthma associatedwith breastfeeding. These reports contrast with studiesdemonstratingreductionofchildhoodwheezingandaller-gic diseases among breastfed children, leading to contro-versy and debate [2,3]. A recent editorial in the BritishMedical Journal concluded ‘...the claim that breastfeed-ingreducestheriskofallergyandasthmaisnotsupportedby evidence’ [4 ]. This review examines reasons for theconflicting reports and suggests an over-arching perspect-ive given recent evidence.Breastfeeding is a natural phenomenon, providingbalanced nutrition and mother–infant bonding, as wellas a number of health benefits. These include reducedincidence of infectious diseases, including diarrheal dis-eases and lower respiratory tract infections, reducedincidence of diabetes and obesity, and improved mentalperformance [5,6]. There are numerous reasons whybreastfeeding should be encouraged wherever possible,with few exceptions such as in the presence of maternalHIV infection [7].
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.020 | 0.022 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.013 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.020 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.011 | 0.025 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".