1 Infant feeding practice and childhood cognitive performance in South India

2 Aim: Several studies have suggested a beneficial effect of infant breast-feeding on childhood cognitive function. Our main objective was to examine whether duration of breast-feeding and age at introduction of complementary foods are related to cognitive performance in 9-10 year old school going children in South-India. Methods: We examined 514 children from the Mysore Parthenon birth cohort for whom breast-feeding duration (6 categories from <3 to>18 months) and age at introduction of complementary foods (4 categories from <4 to>6 months) were collected at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year annual follow-up visits. Their cognitive function was assessed at a mean age of 9.7 years using 3 core tests from the Kaufman Assessment Battery for children and additional tests measuring long-term retrieval/storage, attention and concentration, visuo-spatial and verbal abilities. Results: All the children were initially breast-fed. The mode for duration of breast-feeding was 12-17 months (45.7%) and for age at introduction of complementary foods 4 month