Impact of Maternal Ramadan Fasting on Growth Parameters in Exclusively Breast-fed Infants

Introduction: There are many advantages of breast milk for infants. The impact of Ramadan fastingof breast-feeding mothers on their exclusively breast-fed infants’ growth is still not clear. Theobjective of this study is to determine the impact of maternal Ramadan fasting on growth parametersof exclusively breast-fed infants.Methods: This cohort study was conducted during Ramadan and five months after Ramadan on 116healthy, exclusively breast-fed infants aged 15 days to 6 months. 36 infants, whose mothers fastedthroughout Ramadan (case group) and 80 infants, whose mothers did not fast (control group), wereenrolled in the study. All infants underwent periodic physical examinations, twice in Ramadan, 3times in the second month and twice monthly in the next 4 months. The data analyses were doneusing a repeated measure analysis of variance. Statistical significance was defined as P 0.05.Analyses were performed using SPSS statistical package and repeated measures ANOVA.Findings: All growth parameters increased during the study period (P 0.05), rate of increase beingthe same for both groups (P 0.05). There is obvious increasing trend for all growth parameters; thistrend depends on age and is almost similar for both groups.Conclusion: Ramadan fasting by breast-feeding mothers did not adversely affect the growthparameters of exclusively breast-fed infants in short-term.