PEDIATRICS Vol. 100 No. 6 December 1997, p. e2
ELECTRONIC ARTICLE:
Breastfeeding and the Risk of Life-threatening Enterotoxigenic
Escherichia coli Diarrhea in Bangladeshi Infants and
Children
,
,
,
,
, and
From the * International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research,
Dhaka, Bangladesh;
National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, Bethesda, Maryland; § Johns Hopkins School of Public
Health, Baltimore, Maryland; and
Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia.
Objective. To assess the relationship between breastfeeding and the risk of life-threatening enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) diarrhea among Bangladeshi infants and young children <36 months of age.
Design. Case-control study.
Setting. A rural Bangladesh community.
Participants. A total of 168 cases with clinically severe ETEC diarrhea detected in a treatment center-based surveillance system during 1985 to 1986 and 3679 controls selected in three surveys of the same community during the same calendar interval.
Outcomes. Cases and controls were compared for the frequency of antecedent breastfeeding patterns.
Results. Compared with other feeding modes, exclusive breastfeeding of infants was associated with significant protection against severe ETEC diarrhea (relative risk [RR] = 0.51; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.28,0.96). However, during the second and third years of life, the risk of this outcome was similar in both breastfed and nonbreastfed children (RR = 0.98; 95% CI: 0.45,2.12), and no significant overall protective association between breastfeeding and severe ETEC diarrhea was evident during the first 3 years of life (RR = 0.86; 95% CI: 0.43,1.74).
Conclusions. Exclusive breastfeeding appeared to protect infants against severe ETEC diarrhea, but breastfeeding was not associated with protection after infancy, nor was it associated with a major overall reduction of severe ETEC disease during the first 3 years of life. Although not diminishing the importance of breastfeeding, our findings suggest that other interventions, such as immunization and education about proper food hygiene, may also be required in efforts to prevent this major pediatric disease.
Key words: enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli, breastfeeding, diarrhea.Enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) is a major infectious etiology of pediatric diarrhea in developing countries and a significant cause of death in these settings.1,2 Despite the potential effectiveness of case management of ETEC diarrhea with suitable rehydration therapy, many children in developing countries fail to receive adequate rehydration for diarrheal illnesses,3 and even appropriate rehydration will not necessarily prevent the nutritional faltering that has been associated with ETEC diarrhea.4 For these reasons, interventions to prevent ETEC diarrhea are needed.
Promotion of breastfeeding has been accorded an important role in primary health care programs in developing countries.5 Several indirect lines of evidence suggest that breastfeeding may protect infants and young children against ETEC diarrhea. Ingestion of hyperimmune colostrum has been shown to protect suckling newborn animals against natural ETEC infections.6 Moreover, oral administration of hyperimmune colostrum to adult human volunteers protected them against an experimental ETEC infectious challenge.7 However, surveillance data from developing countries have often revealed an appreciable incidence of ETEC diarrhea during infancy,8 when breastfeeding is common, questioning whether breastfeeding is actually associated with a lower risk of ETEC diarrhea in these settings.
In this paper, we report a case-control study of the association between breastfeeding and the risk of severe ETEC diarrhea in rural Bangladeshi infants and young children. We chose severely dehydrating ETEC diarrhea as the study endpoint, because this outcome is of clear public health importance. Moreover, we selected rural Bangladesh as the setting for addressing this issue, because breastfeeding has been shown to be related protectively to several enteric infections in this setting.9
Setting for the Study
The study was conducted in the Matlab field studies area of the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, a rural area with approximately 200 000 residents. In conjunction with a field trial of oral cholera vaccines initiated in 1985,12 surveillance was instituted for all patients seeking care for diarrhea at the three Matlab diarrheal treatment centers. In this surveillance, patients received systematic clinical and microbiological assessments, and selected dietary and sociodemographic information was collected. Fecal specimens were evaluated for ETEC by testing five lactose-fermenting colonies for heat labile (LT) and heat stable (ST) toxins, using the adrenal cell and infant mouse assays, respectively.13,14 Stools were also evaluated for rotavirus with the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay techique,15 as well as for Vibrio cholerae 01 and Shigella with conventional techniques.12Selection and Definition of Cases
Cases were children who resided in Matlab and were detected as having an episode of clinically severe ETEC diarrhea diagnosed during 1985 and 1986 in one of the three Matlab treatment centers. Clinically severe disease was chosen as the target outcome because of its public health importance, and because limitation of the case group to episodes of severe ETEC diarrhea, for which solicitation of care could be presumed to be nondiscretionary, minimized the potential for selection biases related to differences in the use of the treatment centers by the Matlab population.16Selection of Controls
Control children were selected from three community surveys of the Matlab population, conducted in conjunction with the cholera vaccine trial in August and September 1985, November and December 1985, and March and April 1986. In each survey, 70 clusters of geographically contiguous families were randomly selected from census records of the Matlab Demographic Surveillance System. Home visits were made to collect sera and other relevant information, after acquisition of informed consent.19 Each of the resulting 210 clusters was unique and contained ~300 persons. In each cluster, 20 families having at least one child <5 years of age were randomly selected. We identified all 3759 children who were <36 months of age in these families at the times of the surveys; the 3 679 for whom dietary histories were obtained constituted the control group for this study.Determination of Dietary Histories and Other Data
Dietary histories were collected in a uniform manner from mothers or care takers at the time of presentation for care for cases and at the time of the survey visits for controls. These data were collected by interviewers who were not aware of the study hypothesis. We defined a child as breastfed if breast milk constituted any portion of the child's diet, as determined for the day before the onset of the episode for cases and for the day before the interview for controls. Exclusive breastfeeding denoted a diet in which no other solids or liquids were included. Other breastfed children were classified as partially breastfed. Height was measured to the nearest 0.1 cm during treatment visits for cases and during the surveys for controls, using identical supine length boards for children too young to stand and standing height sticks for older children. Height-for-age Z scores were calculated in relation to National Center for Health Statistics standards.20 Data about sociodemographic variables were collected during home visits for cases, shortly after the treatment visit, and during the surveys for controls.Analyses
Comparisons of cases and controls for categorical variables were appraised statistically with the
2 test or the
Fisher exact test for contrasts of binary variables in which the
population was sparsely distributed. Contrasts of dimensional variables
were evaluated with the Student's t test or the
Mann-Whitney U test when parametric assumptions were not fulfilled. To assess the strength of associations between breastfeeding and the risk of severe ETEC diarrhea, we calculated odds ratios. Because of the rarity of clinically severe ETEC diarrhea in Matlab children <36 months of age (<1% risk over the study interval), odds
ratios relating breastfeeding to severe ETEC diarrhea estimated the
relative risk (RR) of severe ETEC diarrhea in breastfed versus nonbreastfed children.21 Estimations of 95% confidence
intervals (CI) for these RR values were performed with test-based
methods, or with exact methods when mandated by sparse
data.22
Among ETEC isolates from the 168 cases, 42 (25%) expressed LT only, 56 (33%) expressed ST only, and 70 (42%) elaborated both toxins. A total of 68% of the cases presented with hyperacute symptoms (
2 days' duration), and one (.6%) died during hospitalization.
Comparability of Cases and Controls
Table 1 compares cases and controls for several sociodemographic and anthropometric features. In simple analyses, cases were significantly younger than controls and, corresponding to this younger age, manifested better height-for-age Z scores. Cases also tended to have significantly younger mothers and to live in homes with a lower prevalence of tubewell water sources.|
Table 1. Comparative Features Severe ETEC Diarrheal Cases and Community Controls |
Association Between Breastfeeding and Severe ETEC Diarrhea
As shown in Table 2, 155 (92%) of cases versus 3045 (83%) of controls were breastfed, leading to a crude RR of 2.48 (95% CI: 1.37,4.61). However, after adjustment for potentially confounding variables, the RR declined to 0.86 (95% CI: 0.43,1.74), indicating no significant association. Adjusted RR values were similar for comparisons of LT-only cases, ST-only cases, and LT+/ST+ cases with the entire control group (RRa = 0.85, 0.68, and 1.01, respectively).|
Table 2. Overall Association Between Breastfeeding and Severe ETEC Diarrhea |
Table 3.
Association Between Breastfeeding (BF) and Severe ETEC Diarrhea, by Age
and Feeding Mode
Severe ETEC Diarrhea Versus Severe Cholera as Disease Outcomes
Because V cholerae 01 and ETEC can cause clinically indistinguishable watery diarrheas17,24 and because information obtained during surveillance was collected in an identical manner for all diarrheal cases blinded to diarrheal etiology, our surveillance provided a unique opportunity to compare the associations between breastfeeding and severe cholera versus severe ETEC diarrhea (Table 4). In these analyses, we selected cholera and ETEC cases from children <36 months of age who were detected during the 1985 to 1986 study interval; we used the definitions described earlier for diarrheal episodes, diarrheal severity, and breastfeeding status for both groups of cases; and we excluded cases with bloody diarrhea or with the following fecal copathogens: rotavirus and Shigella for both groups, V cholerae 01 for the ETEC group, and ETEC for the V cholerae 01 group.|
Table 4. Comparative Associations Between Breastfeeding (BF) and Severe ETEC and Severe Cholera Diarrhea in Rural Bangladeshi Infants and Children |
Our data suggest that breastfeeding of infants and children in this rural Bangladeshi population is associated with a rather meager overall reduction of the overall risk of severe ETEC diarrhea during the first 3 years of life. The small overall protective association (a nonsignificant 14% reduction of risk during the first 3 years of life) contrasts markedly with the
70% reduction of the risk of severe
cholera seen in these same Bangladeshi children.10 The
disparities in these levels of protection suggest that the immune and
nonimmune protective properties of breastfeeding are far less effective
against ETEC than against cholera in rural Bangladesh, despite the
similar noninvasive pathogenesis of both infections and the known
antigenic similarities of cholera toxin and ETEC LT.24,25
Potential Limitations of the Study
Despite the large numbers of cases (168) and controls (3679) included in this study, the study was limited by the rather small number of nonbreastfed children in both the case and the control groups. Nevertheless, the 95% CI for the overall RRa (0.43,1.74; Table 2) excluded values (>57%) corresponding to high-grade protection. Moreover, despite the paucity of nonbreastfed infants in the study, we found a statistically significant trend of increasing protective associations between breastfeeding and the risk of severe ETEC diarrhea with increasing exclusivity of breast milk in the diet, and a statistically significant association between exclusive breastfeeding per se (vs all other feeding modes) and the risk of severe ETEC diarrhea (Table 3). The last observation is important, because placement of partially breastfed infants in the group contrasted with exclusively breastfed infants made this contrast more conservative than the contrast between exclusive breastfeeding and no breastfeeding.Relation to Previous Studies
Two previous studies suggested that titers of SIgA against LT in breast milk correlate inversely with the risk of diarrhea once an infant becomes infected by LT-producing ETEC.26,27 One of these studies also found that the practice of breastfeeding was not associated with a reduced rate of colonization by ETEC per se, but was associated with a reduced rate of diarrhea among already colonized infants.27
at
least in rural Bangladesh.
Age-related Differences in Protection
Although the overall impact of breastfeeding on severe ETEC diarrhea during the first 3 years of life appeared modest, breastfeeding appeared to be associated with a lower risk of severe ETEC diarrhea during infancy. Because of the divergent relationships between breastfeeding and the risk of severe ETEC during and after infancy, it seems unlikely that the apparent protection during infancy was attributable to the rehydrating benefits of continued breastfeeding during diarrhea, because these benefits should also have been evident during the second and third years of life.
the factors regarded as primarily
responsible for immune protection.28 Although titers of
these antibodies in Bangladeshis have not been reported, one study from
nearby Pakistan indicated that rather substantial titers of
ETEC-specific antibodies are evident in mothers' breast
milk.29
Practical Implications
Our data suggest that promotion of breastfeeding cannot be relied on to have a major impact on the overall problem of life-threatening ETEC diarrhea in children residing in developing countries. For several reasons, however, this conclusion does not detract from the overall benefits of breastfeeding and the potential benefits of breastfeeding promotion in these settings. First, our analysis did not evaluate potential preventive effects of breastfeeding on mild ETEC illnesses, which, although not associated with life-threatening dehydration, may nevertheless be associated with growth-faltering.1,4 Second, although not proven, it is conceivable that the growth-faltering associated with ETEC may be more pronounced in infants and that the preventive impact of breastfeeding on ETEC infections in infants, shown in our data, could thereby be of great clinical importance. Finally, regardless of the magnitude of the preventive impact of breastfeeding on ETEC infections, the documented ability of breastfeeding to prevent other gastrointestinal infections in developing countries, such as cholera and shigellosis,10,11 as well as its overall salutary impact on infant and childhood mortality in these settings,32,33 provides strong support for breastfeeding promotion programs in these settings.
Received for publication Oct 3, 1996; accepted Jul 7, 1997.
Reprint requests to (J.D.C.) Division of Epidemiology, Statistics, and Prevention Research, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 6100 Executive Blvd, Bethesda, MD 20892-7510.
This research was supported by the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, and was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (contract 282-90-0019). The International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh, is supported by countries and agencies that share its concern for the health problems of developing countries. Current donors include the governments of Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States; organizations including the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Children's Fund, and the World Health Organization; and private foundations including the Ford Foundation and the Sasakawa Foundation.
We thank Arabinda Banik, M. Giassuddin, Moqbul Hossain, N. Huda, Anwarul Huq, A. Nurul Islam, M.A.H. Miah, MA Satter Miah, Liaquat Mondal, M. Noorullah, Badrul Pradhan, Anisur Rahman, Siddiqur Rahman, A.M. Sarder, K. Shaikh, Charles Simons, and the additional field, laboratory, and data management staff who worked so diligently in implementing the oral cholera vaccine trial, which provided the basis for this project; Professors Jan Holmgren and Ann-Mari Svennerholm for helpful advice; and Professors William B. Greenough and Roger Eeckels for support, guidance, and encouragement.
ETEC, enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli. LT, heat labile toxin. ST, heat stable toxin. RR, relative risk. CI, confidence interval.
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Pediatrics (ISSN 0031 4005). Copyright ©1997 by the American Academy of Pediatrics
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