Blood glucose levels in healthy, term, appropriate for gestational age, exclusively breastfed infants
Abstract
Objective This study aimed to determine blood glucose levels ofhealthy, term, appropriate for gestational age (AGA), exclusively
breastfed infants at the age of 6, 12, 24, 48, and 72 hours of life,
and to investigate the incidence of hypoglycemia in those infants.
Methods All healthy, term, AGA infants born in Cipto
Mangunkusumo General Hospital, Jakarta, who were exclusively
breastfed during the recruitment period of December 2003 until
February 2004, were included in this study. These infants were
subjected to blood glucose level determination at the age of 6, 12,
24, 48, or 72 hours of life, and the clinical signs of hypoglycemia
were monitored.
Results Two hundred and fifteen blood samples taken from 137
newborns were studied. There was no incidence of hypoglycemia
observed, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic. The range of
blood glucose levels was between 41 mg/dl and 115 mg/dl. The
means and the standard deviations (SD) of the blood glucose lev-
els of the 6-, 12-, 24-, 48- and 72-hour old infants were 59.7 (11.98)
mg/dl, 64.1 (13.51) mg/dl, 65.9 (14.42) mg/dl, 67.0 (14.95) mg/dl,
and 78.6 (16.51) mg/dl, respectively.
Conclusions The current concern for hypoglycemia in the popu-
lation of healthy, term, AGA, exclusively breastfed infants during
the first few days of life was not proven to exist. Therefore, there is
no reason to resort to prelacteal feeding in such infants
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Accepted 2016-10-05
Published 2016-10-10