NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - When some babies are born, they require suctioning to clear the throat and stomach. Apparently, this procedure may lead to oversensitivity to intestinal upsets and functional disturbance in childhood and adolescence, according to a new study.

Dr. K. J. S. Anand, from the Arkansas Children's Hospital, in Little Rock, and colleagues in Sweden came up with the idea that "noxious" stimulation at birth may increase the long-term risk of developing mind-body disorders in later life.

To investigate the possibility, the team retrieved birth records of 1100 children who had a birth complication or experienced birth asphyxia. Overall, functional intestinal symptoms occurred more frequently among these children than in the general population, at 9.5 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.

One hundred eight of the children had been hospitalized for functional intestinal symptoms, and these subjects were compared with 116 unaffected siblings.

Gastric suction at birth had occurred in 24 of the 108 cases (22.2 percent) and 13 of the 116 sibling controls (11.2 percent), the team reports in the Journal of Pediatrics. No differences in birth trauma or birth asphyxia were seen between the two groups.

Compared with controls, infants who underwent gastric suctioning at birth had nearly a three-fold increased risk of having a functional intestinal disorder later in life

"Our research suggests that exposure to adverse conditions or noxious procedures during the first few minutes or days after birth, may cause persistent changes in brain development at that time, thus creating a propensity for specific patterns of behavior and an increased vulnerability to various psychosomatic disorders," Anand told Reuters Health.

SOURCE: Journal of Pediatrics, April 2004.