Does Cow Milk Prevent The Risk Of Developing Type 1 Diabetes In Children?

In the year 2002, the researchers had embarked on a large scale study on 2159 infants with a family member affected by type 1 diabetes and with genetic risk of type 1 diabetes to find an answer to the question whether delaying the exposure to complex foreign proteins will decrease the risk of diabetes.

After breastfeeding, the babies were weaned either to a special formula, with the cow's milk proteins split in to small peptides, which are small pieces of proteins, or to regular cow's milk based formula with intact cow's milk proteins. Babies received the study formula for at least two months until the age of around six to eight months and at the same time avoided cow's milk proteins from all other food sources.

All the subjects of the research were followed for at least 10 years to assess the numbers of children who developed diabetes.

The results of the research showed that in this large international randomized trial weaning to an extensively hydrolysed casein formula during infancy did not result in a reduction in the incidence of type 1 diabetes compared to regular intact cow's milk based formula after about 11.5 years of follow up.

Accordingly there is no certain evidence to revise the current dietary recommendations for infants at high risk for type 1 diabetes.