Efficacy Assessment of Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment in the Suboptimal Breastfeeding Behaviour

Breastfeeding is one of the prime factors of long-term health protection in newborns, for nutritional, immunological and developmental reasons. In France there is a wide inter-regional variability of breastfeeding rates at discharge. This variability associates different factors involving both, mothers, birth conditions, newborns and mother-child couple. Some approaches, including osteopathy, aim to support early breastfeeding difficulties. As many others non-conventional medicines, there is a huge and growing interest for this alternative therapy and a spontaneous recourse in the first months of life. Nevertheless, neither efficacy nor the benefits have been studied. Thus, our objective is to evaluate for the first time in France, in a randomized, double-blinded design, the efficacy of early osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT), in suboptimal breastfeeding behaviour healthy newborns. 128 couples mother-child will be randomized in two groups: with or without osteopathic intervention on the newborn.