Baby brain power linked to mother's milk?
February 21st 2010 09:37
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From: Salisburypost.com
KANNAPOLIS — Lincoln Perkins celebrated his 6-month birthday by becoming the first baby in a new breastfeeding nutrition study at the N.C. Research Campus.
Distracted by researchers and recruiters playing peek-a-boo, Lincoln recently sat under a dome of cameras and forgot that he was wearing a high-tech net over his head.
"There's your brain," Dr. Carol Cheatham said as an image of the electrical activity coming from Lincoln's scalp appeared on a computer screen. "He has a perfect head."
Lincoln's mom, Yvonne Perkins of Kannapolis, agreed.
Perkins chose to wait in the hallway while cameras on the geodesic dome photographed Lincoln, which took about 10 minutes. She said the youngest of her five children gets fussy if he can see her.
Later, Perkins held Lincoln on her lap as he looked at 100 images on a computer, while 128 sensors affixed to the net recorded his brain activity.
Cheatham tests for recognition memory and the brain's sequencing function, both abilities that she suspects are affected by fatty acid levels in the brain.
"He was a little unsure about the attention and this thing on his head in the beginning, but he's a very laid back baby and once he forgot about the cap on his head, he was happy," Perkins said.
From the initial consenting process through the memory test, the painless procedure took about an hour. Researchers had collected breastmilk from Perkins and saliva from Lincoln three months earlier.
The fluids, which are analyzed using state-of-the-art instruments at the $1.5 billion Research Campus, tell Cheatham about the genetic make-up of mother and baby, as well as nutrients in the breastmilk.
"I couldn't wait to be a part of this," said Perkins, who saw a flyer recruiting babies for the study. "It's an exciting opportunity for me to be involved with something that can further the research about how great breastfeeding is."
Cheatham, a neuroscientist and child psychologist with the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's Nutrition Research Institute in Kannapolis, wants to know if the levels of fatty acids delivered by mothers through breastmilk have a measurable effect on the memory ability of their infants.
In other words, she's trying to figure out why breastfed babies generally have higher IQs than formula-fed babies, and she suspects that fatty acids play a role.
Her research could change the way pregnant women eat and how pediatricians treat their youngest patients.
The breastfeeding project is one of three ongoing nutrition studies in Cheatham's lab.
Cheatham needs 200 3-month-old breastfed babies, 80 6-month-old formula-fed babies and 100 16-month-old toddlers. Children must enroll before they reach the required ages, and all participants are paid.
Pregnant women can join the database and participate after their babies are born.
The studies are going well but slowly, Cheatham said.
"Recruitment is the biggest obstacle," she said.
To spread the word about her research, she's hired Julie Stegall and Karina Agopian as recruiters. She has a research assistant, Rachael Murdock, and two interns, Sarah Devlin and Lauren Graham of Catawba College.
Murdock isn't related to David Murdock, the billionaire chairman of Dole Food Co. who founded the Research Campus to study health, nutrition and agriculture.
Cheatham's lab also recruits subjects through Salisbury Pediatric Associates, hospitals in Concord and Salisbury and a nonprofit program called Parents as Teachers.
"It's very interesting and has a lot of validity," said Marcie Petty, an educator with Parents as Teachers whose office is in Cheatham's lab. "It makes you think about what your children eat and what they're taking in."
Petty and other parent educators in Cabarrus County encourage their clients to consider enrolling in Cheatham's studies.
Parents as Teachers works with parents in their home, teaching them about child development and stimulating play. The organization's mission dovetails with Cheatham's, Petty said.
"It's well-needed research, especially to make these children school-ready, which is what our program is all about," she said.
Cheatham's three studies — breastfed babies, formula-fed babies and toddlers — are pilot projects. They will provide evidence for a larger study, potentially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, that would recruit several thousand babies.
The research, which will take years, could determine what role genes play in turning on a newly discovered metabolic pathway that scientists believe can convert one essential fatty acid to another.
Cheatham and others scientists in Kannapolis want to understand the human body's apparent ability to change the essential fatty acid found in flaxseed oil — alpha-linolenic acid or ALA — into the superior fatty acid found in fish oil — docosahexaenoic acid or DHA.
"This is important because flax is a plant which we can grow," Cheatham said. "It is cheaper, safer and more readily available than fish."
It's also easier to get children to eat flaxseed, which has a nutty flavor, than salmon and sardines.
If Cheatham shows that children can obtain DHA from a more sustainable, tastier and less expensive source, parents might provide the nutrient to their babies and women might consume more while pregnant.
"This could affect the standard of care, what doctors recommend to their patients," she said. "We have the ultimate goal of giving every baby a fighting chance for success."
Scientists believe that DHA increases concentration, improves memory and reduces hyperactivity, among dozens of other brain-related benefits.
But the only benefit they've been able to prove is DHA's ability to support brain development in premature infants. It also helps treat heart disease.
Cheatham said she suspects that differences in individual metabolism have been skewing DHA studies for years, causing mixed results and no concrete conclusions.
But a large study at the UNC Nutrition Research Institute, which focuses on why people have different metabolisms and nutrient requirements, could finally show that DHA plays a crucial role in developing children's brains, Cheatham said.
And she needs hundreds of moms and babies to prove it.
"Ultimately, we would help millions of kids," she said. "They could say that they were a part of that."
To learn more, send an e-mail to feedingbrains@yahoo.com.
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