Full-term babies who are exclusively breastfed are not at heightened risk of low iron stores by the age of six months, even if their mothers were iron-deficient during pregnancy, a new study shows. The findings, published in the International Breastfeeding Journal, support experts’ belief that breast milk alone provides most infants with adequate nutrition for the first six months of life. Breast milk is low in iron, but infants can absorb it much more easily than they absorb the iron in fortified formula. Healthy full-term infants are also born with enough iron stores to make deficiency unlikely in the first six months.

In general, it’s recommended that breastfed babies start on iron-fortified foods, like infant cereal, at about six months. In the current study, Indian researchers followed 129 full-term babies born to 68 mothers with normal iron stores or to 61 mothers with iron-deficiency anaemia. The mothers took iron and folic acid supplements as their obstetricians advised, but their infants were exclusively breastfed, without supplemental iron. At six months of age, none of the babies were iron-deficient, regardless of whether their mothers had been anaemic, according to the researchers, led by Dr Shashi Raj of the University College of Medical Sciences in Delhi.

Antibodies may point to early lung cancer
Lung cancer is usually diagnosed at a late stage when it’s difficult to cure, but a blood test may lead to earlier detection, researchers report. The immune system produces antibodies that target antigens on lung tumors. Screening blood samples for these antibodies, using a panel of tumor-associated antigens, could identify people with lung cancer in the early stages. The report appwared in the medical journal Thorax. Among patients with cancer that was still localised and had not spread to the lymph nodes, antibodies were found in 89 percent of cases. The researchers found that three of the antigens, which occur in several different types of cancer, “did not add significantly to the panel assay.”