Habitual lip and tongue posture in infants with Trisomy 21: characterization and associated factors.
Letícia Pereira Quintaes Godinho, Larissa Melgaço Campos, Andréa Rodrigues Motta and 1 others
Most of 61 infants with Trisomy 21 spent the majority of their time with parted or open lips and their tongue in a low position.
Breastfeeding was linked to better tongue posture and higher birth weight to better lip posture, but each association was small.
Key findings
1Of 61 infants, 63.9% had parted lips as their predominant posture and 63.5% of video time was spent in inappropriate tongue positions.
2Breastfeeding was associated with tongue inside the oral cavity, and higher birth weight with parted rather than open lips. All significant associations had small effect sizes.
3No infant assessed after 6 months of age had closed lips as their predominant posture.
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What it does not show
No sample size calculation was performed; the 61 infants were simply those available in the outreach program database. The observation window was only 5 minutes, which may not capture the full range of postures an infant shows across a day. Posture was judged from video, which the authors acknowledge is subjective, though agreement was checked on 20% of recordings. Only clinical variables were examined. Socioeconomic factors, maternal health, and complementary feeding practices were not considered. The cross-sectional design means the associations with breastfeeding, birth weight, and age cannot be read as causal.
Declared interests
No funding or conflicts of interest were declared.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the breastfeeding finding as evidence that breastfeeding improves tongue posture. The study is cross-sectional, the effect size was small, and 61 infants from one clinic cannot support a causal claim.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →