Association of timing of initial breastfeeding and neonatal outcome in very preterm infants: a multicentre cohort study in China
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the association between the timing of initial breastfeeding and the risk of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) and other neonatal outcomes in very preterm infants (VPIs, <32 weeks' gestation). DESIGN: Multicentre observational cohort study. SETTING: Data were collected from 102 tertiary neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in China between 2019 and 2023 through the Chinese Neonatal Network. PATIENTS: A total of 12 679 VPIs admitted to NICUs within 24 hours of birth and initially breastfed within 7 days were included. INTERVENTIONS: Infants were categorised into four groups based on initial breastfeeding timing: within 24 hours (n=2242), 24-48 hours (n=3657), 48-72 hours (n=1870) and after 72 hours (n=4910, reference group). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome was NEC (stage ≥2). Secondary outcomes included mortality, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, severe neurological injury, severe retinopathy of prematurity, late-onset sepsis, NICU length of stay and intravenous nutrition duration. RESULTS: Early breastfeeding initiation (<24 hours) was associated with a higher incidence of NEC (7.5% vs 4.3%, OR 1.92, 95% CI 1.21 to 3.06). No significant NEC risk increase was observed for feeding initiation after 24 hours. Early breastfeeding was linked to a shorter duration of intravenous nutrition (median 15 days (IQR 10-27) vs 22 days (IQR 14-33), mean difference -3.93 days, 95% CI -6.57 to -1.3). Subgroup analysis revealed increased NEC risk in neonates delivered via caesarean section, those receiving blood transfusions and those born <28 weeks' gestation. CONCLUSIONS: While early breastfeeding initiation (<24 hours) reduces intravenous nutrition duration, it may elevate NEC risk in specific high-risk subgroups. Feeding strategies should be individualised based on gestational age, delivery mode and transfusion status. Further randomised trials are needed to optimise early feeding protocols for VPIs.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
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 teacher head, 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".