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 Researchers focused on a practice known as “kangaroo care,” which
has been linked to lower infant mortality and better developmental
outcomes for vulnerable babies. Kangaroo care includes skin-to-skin
contact between the newborn and mother, exclusive breastfeeding,
early discharge from the hospital after delivery and close follow-up
care at home.
“Kangaroo mother care has a significant, long lasting social and
behavioral protective effect 20 years after the intervention,” said
lead study author Dr. Nathalie Charpak, director of the Kangaroo
Foundation in Bogota, Colombia.
For the current study, researchers examined data on 228 young adults
who had been randomly chosen to receive kangaroo care as part of a
study done when they were babies. Charpak and her colleagues
compared outcomes for these kids to those of 213 young adults from
the infant study who didn’t receive kangaroo care.
Babies that received kangaroo care were 61 percent less likely to
die during infancy than newborns who didn’t receive this type of
care, the researchers report in Pediatrics.
Breastfeeding rates were higher for the kangaroo care babies than
the other infants, the study found. In addition, the infants who got
kangaroo care had fewer severe infections requiring hospitalization.
As children, the kangaroo care kids typically spent more years in
preschool than the control group of participants who didn’t receive
this infant care, the study found.
Students who got kangaroo care as babies also scored higher on
standardized math and language tests and earned higher hourly wages
as young adults.
By age 20, the former kangaroo care babies were less likely to be
aggressive, impulsive and hyperactive or to exhibit anti-social
behaviors compared to their peers who didn’t receive kangaroo care
as infants, the study also found. This difference was most
pronounced when their mothers were poor and less educated.
It’s possible some of these outcomes might be the result of kangaroo
care’s protective effect on the immature brains of preemies, Charpak
said by email. This type of care might foster brain development that
occurs late in pregnancy for full-term babies but that doesn’t have
a chance to happen before premature infants are born.
Another possibility is that parents who provide kangaroo care also
nurture children in other ways that are beneficial to health, social
and behavioral outcomes, Charpak added.
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One limitation of the study is that it doesn’t prove how kangaroo
care may benefit babies, only that there are associations between
receiving this treatment and several positive health outcomes, the
authors note.
Even so, the findings suggest that kangaroo care provides a solid
foundation for health later in life, said Dr. Lydia Furman, a
pediatrics researcher at Case Western Reserve University and Rainbow
Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio.
“Perhaps doing the kangaroo mother care helped the parents become
more attentive and bonded and nurturing parents – certainly this is
a thought and hope,” Furman, who wrote an accompanying editorial,
said by email. “Biological responses would follow, not lead.”
While the benefits of kangaroo care during infancy have been well
established, the current study offers fresh insight into the lasting
effects of kangaroo care in adulthood, said Susan Ludington,
executive director for the United States Institute for Kangaroo
Care.
“Kangaroo care has remarkably positive outcomes on both biology –
the brain's maturation, cerebral blood flow, cerebral oxygenation,
connectivity between neurons and neuronal networks – as well as
nurturing the mother's confidence and competence in child rearing,
the quality and quantity of her interactions, strengthening the
infant’s identity with his family members, and promotion of the
infant’s mental, motor, and social development,” Ludington, who
wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2gwPq4T and http://bit.ly/2gREgnf Pediatrics,
online December 12, 2016.
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