Don't Feed an Infant Solids Too Early

Posting Date: 10/02/2003

Dr. Dean's Comments: Some people seem to think that if their infant eats solid food early that they are somehow more advanced, more grown up. Pediatricians will tell you that feeding cereals to kids at 3 months of age is too early. This research says that if you do that or if you wait until they are 7 months old they will have a 4 times higher risk of juvenile diabetes (the article calls it "islet autoimmunity"). Bottom line...introduce cereals to a newborn when they are 4-6 months old.

Timing of Initial Cereal Exposure in Infancy and Risk of Islet Autoimmunity

Jill M. Norris, MPH, PhD; Katherine Barriga, MSPH; Georgeanna Klingensmith, MD; Michelle Hoffman, RN; George S. Eisenbarth, MD, PhD; Henry A. Erlich, MD, PhD; Marian Rewers, MD, PhD

JAMA. 2003;290:1713-1720.

ABSTRACT

Context Dietary exposures in infancy have been implicated, albeit inconsistently, in the etiology of type 1 diabetes mellitus (DM).

Objective To examine the association between cereal exposures in the infant diet and appearance of islet autoimmunity (IA).

Design Birth cohort study conducted from 1994 to 2002 with a mean follow-up of 4 years.

Setting Newborn screening for HLA was done at St Joseph's Hospital in Denver, Colo. First-degree relatives of type 1 DM individuals were recruited from the Denver metropolitan area.

Participants We enrolled 1183 children at increased type 1 DM risk, defined as either HLA genotype or having a first-degree relative with type 1 DM, at birth and followed them prospectively. We obtained exposure and outcome measures for 76% of enrolled children. Participants had variable lengths of follow-up (9 months to 9 years).

Main Outcome Measures Blood draws for the detection of insulin autoantibody, glutamic acid decarboxylase autoantibody, or IA-2 autoantibody were performed at 9, 15, and 24 months and annually thereafter. Children with IA (n = 34) were defined as those testing positive for at least 1 of the autoantibodies on 2 or more consecutive visits and who tested positive or had diabetes on their most recent visit.

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