Effect of Breast Milk on the Frequency of Bronchopulmonary Dysplasia in Very Low Birth Weight Premature Infants: A Meta-analysis

Purpose: To analyze the effect of different feeding types on bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) in very low birth weight preterm infants. Methods: The Cochrane Library, PubMed, Embase, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), Wanfang Data Knowledge Service Platform, China Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) were searched for literature related to breastfeeding and BPD, with a search period from their inception to January 2023. Two researchers independently screened the literature, extracted data, and assessed the quality of included studies before analyzing the data using Stata16 and RevMan5.4.1 software. Results: A total of 17 studies were included. The results showed that there was no significant difference in the frequency of BPD between human milk (HM) and donor human milk (DHM) (OR = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.29-1.03, p = 0.07). However, DHM had a significant effect in reducing the frequency of BPD compared to preterm formula (PF) (OR = 0.62, 95% CI: 0.41-0.94, p = 0.02). Exclusive HM also had a significant effect in reducing the frequency of BPD compared to exclusive PF (OR = 0.51, 95% CI: 0.34-0.78, p = 0.002), as well as compared to any PF (OR = 0.57, 95% CI: 0.37-0.88, p = 0.01). Furthermore, mainly (>50%) HM had a significant effect in reducing the frequency of BPD compared to mainly PF (OR = 0.72, 95% CI: 0.55-0.93, p = 0.01). However, there was no statistically significant difference between any HM and exclusive PF (OR = 0.88, 95% CI: 0.62-1.23, p = 0.46). Conclusions: Our study findings suggest that both HM and DHM have a significant protective effect in reducing the frequency of BPD occurrence compared to PF. Furthermore, even when the amount of HM is insufficient, feeding more than 50% of the HM volume still provides a protective effect against the frequency of BPD. Therefore, we recommend feeding infants with more than 50% of HM to harness the protective effect of HM against BPD occurrence.