The baby-friendly hospital initiative in Switzerland: trends over a 9-year period.

Background: This article reports the trends over a 9-year period for 4 steps of the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) (exclusive breastfeeding, uninterrupted rooming-in, no use of pacifiers, and initiation of breastfeeding within the first 2 hours after birth) during hospital stays in Switzerland.

Methods: Data were collected annually over a period of 9 years from a monitoring survey of all BFHI-accredited hospitals in Switzerland (between 41 and 65 hospitals). The number of participants included in the study per year ranged between 15 627 and 31 141 healthy mother-newborn pairs.

Determinants of change in airway reactivity over 11 years in the SAPALDIA population study.

We investigated determinants of change in bronchial reactivity in the Swiss Cohort Study on Air Pollution and Lung Diseases in Adults (SAPALDIA), a population-based cohort with wide age range (29-72 yrs at follow-up). The role of sex, age, atopic status, smoking and body mass index (BMI) on percentage change in bronchial reactivity slope from the baseline value was analysed in 3,005 participants with methacholine tests in 1991 and 2002, and complete covariate data. Slope was defined as percentage decline in forced expiratory volume in 1 s from its maximal value per micromole of methacholine.