Babies of drug-dependent mothers are born with the same addiction, and have to go through withdrawal. The severity of symptoms is reduced, Australian researchers have found, when such infants are breast fed or given milk expressed by their mothers.

“Promoting the idea of breast-feeding in drug-using women before birth may improve outcome, both medically and socially,” Dr. Julee Oei from University of New South Wales, Kensington, told Reuters Health.

The team explains in the journal Pediatrics that addictive drugs are passed into breast milk, “but the quantity of transferred drug is so low that breast-feeding is considered unlikely to prevent neonatal abstinence syndrome,” as infant withdrawal is called. There’s some evidence, however, that breast-feeding reduces the severity of withdrawal symptoms.

Oei and her colleagues looked into this in a study involving 190 infants born to drug-dependent mothers and at risk of neonatal abstinence syndrome.

The scores measuring withdrawal severity were considerably lower among breast milk-fed infants than among formula-fed infants during the first 9 days of life, the investigators found.

Infants who received breast milk had an average time to withdrawal significantly longer (10 days) than that of infants who received formula (3 days), the report indicates.

Moreover, the researchers note, the need for medication was reduced and the duration of treatment for neonatal abstinence syndrome was about 20 days shorter in the breast milk group.

“Breast milk, unless there are strong contraindications, reduces the severity (but not the incidence) of neonatal abstinence syndrome,” Oei concluded.

“We discourage women from breast-feeding if there is uncertain drug use around the time of a feed,” Oei explained. “We do not stop them from totally breast feeding but encourage them to ‘pump and dump’ for the feeds after the alleged drug intake (usually for a duration equivalent to the length of action of the drug).”

Also, she added, “We discourage them from feeding if they are intoxicated and cannot ensure the safety of the infant for that particular feed (for example, falling asleep during the feed).”

SOURCE: Pediatrics, June 2006.