The English healthcare system is failing to encourage breast feeding and a national strategy to promote breast feeding is urgently needed, say experts on bmj.com today.

Researchers find early cessation or continued breastfeeding by HIV-infected women in low-resource settings give comparable child survival at 24 months

Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) is a global epidemic threatening the lives of millions of people. Because there is no known cure, prevention of the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), is critical for controlling the disease.

Maternal depression during pregnancy, breastfeeding and a lower socioeconomic status are all associated with less infant sleep duration in the first six months of life, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Monday at SLEEP 2008, the 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS).

Challenging the long-standing belief that breast-feeding equally protects all babies against disease, research led by Johns Hopkins Children's Center investigators suggests that when it comes to respiratory infections, the protective effects of breast milk are higher in girls than in boys.

The invaluable organization STATS, which monitors misreporting about science and statistics in the media, has caught the New York Times misrepresenting the research on breastfeeding.

Part-time and casual work among new mothers has almost as big a negative impact on breastfeeding rates as returning to work full-time, says a new study led by the University of Melbourne

An antiretroviral drug already in widespread use in the developing world to prevent the transmission of HIV from infected mothers to their newborns during childbirth has also been found to substantially cut the risk of subsequent HIV transmission during breast-feeding.

A very common gene can help explain why breastfed babies tend to grow up to be more intelligent than those raised exclusively on bottled milk.

The known association between breast feeding and slightly higher IQ in children has been shown to relate to a particular gene in the babies, according to a report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Breastfed babies are less likely to have certain cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in adulthood than their bottle-fed counterparts, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007.

A new study has found that current recommendations about breastfeeding by women with allergies should be reconsidered. The Melbourne University study says exclusive breastfeeding by mothers who have allergies is likely to protect babies from allergies in early childhood.