Removing BGH from milk lowers diabetes risk

Bonnie - the dairy lobby cannot claim there is no data showing that BGH may affect children adversely, as this week's Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine study exhibits.

Researchers wanted to know whether weaning to a bovine insulin–free cow's milk formula (CMF) reduces type 1 diabetes mellitus–associated autoantibodies in children at genetic risk. The randomized, double-blind pilot trial examined 1113 infants over three years with HLA-conferred susceptibility to type 1 diabetes were randomly assigned to receive the CMF, whey-based hydrolyzed formula (WHF) (n = 350), or whey-based FINDIA formula essentially free of bovine insulin during the first 6 months of life whenever breast milk was not available.

6.3% of children in the CMF group, 4.9% of those in the WHF group, and 2.6% of children in the FINDIA group were positive for at least 1 autoantibody by age 3 years. In comparison with ordinary CMF, weaning to an insulin-free CMF reduced the cumulative incidence of autoantibodies by age 3 years in children at genetic risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus.