Breast-feeding and alcoholism: the Trotter hypothesis.

OBJECTIVE

The authors' goal was to determine whether early termination of breast-feeding contributes to later alcohol dependence, as proposed more than 200 years ago by the British physician Thomas Trotter.

METHOD: In 1959-1961, a multiple-specialty group of physicians studied 9, 182 consecutive deliveries in a Danish hospital, obtaining data about prepartum and postpartum variables. The present study concentrates on perinatal variables obtained from 200 of the original babies who participated in a 30-year high-risk follow-up study of the antecedents of alcoholism.

RESULTS

Of the 27 men who were diagnosed as alcohol dependent at age 30, 13 (48%) came from the group weaned from the breast before the age of 3 weeks; only 33 (19%) of the 173 non-alcohol-dependent subjects came from the early weaning group. When challenged by other perinatal variables in a multiple regression analysis, early weaning significantly contributed to the prediction of the severity of alcoholism at age 30.

CONCLUSIONS

The data support the hypothesis that early weaning may be associated with a greater risk of alcohol dependence later in life.