Nutritional status of exclusive breastfed infants in the state of Pernambuco.

Introduction: Exclusive breastfeeding (BF), after the sixth month of life, as a single food source is not recommended. It is believed that it is not possible to supply the caloric needs of protein, iron and vitamin without adequate food supplementation.

Objective: To comparethe nutritional statusof children withexclusive breastfeeding(BF)for more than 6monthsversuschildren with otherbreastfeeding practices.

Method: Cross-sectionalexploratory studywith685children(39BF >6months and646with otherbreastfeeding practices).Situations ofanthropometricdeficit were considered by values< -2 in Z score, anemia evaluated by hemoglobin < 11 g/dL,and deficient/lowlevels ofvitamin A by serumretinol < 1.05 µmol/L.

Results: There were nocases ofdeficitin the anthropometric ratios of weight/height, weight/age andbody mass index(BMI)among childrenBF > 6months,while the comparison group was approximately 0.5%. In theheight/ageratio,the deficitwasaround 2.6% in both groups.Inthe weight/height ratioand BMI,the resultsranged from28.7 to 31.9% foroverweight in group comparisson. TheaverageHb, serumretinol, weightand heightwere similarbetween thegroups.

Discussion: The low prevalence (≤ 0.6%) of protein energy malnutrition in both groups represents a surprising finding, below the values found in reference to normal international reference, WHO standard.

Conclusion: Children who maintained BF after six months exhibited equivalent nutritional status to those of children with other breastfeeding practices.