Effect of Infant Feeding on the Risk of Obesity Across the Life Course: A Quantitative Review of Published Evidence

To examine the influence of initial infant feeding on obesity in later life.

A systematic review of published studies investigating the association between infant feeding and a measure of obesity was performed with Medline (1966 onward) and Embase (1980 onward) databases, supplemented with manual searches. Data extraction was conducted by 2 authors. Analyses were based on odds ratios of obesity among initially breastfed subjects, compared with formula-fed subjects, pooled with fixed-effects models.