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'Toddlers could go diaper-free at 3 months'

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'Toddlers could go diaper-free at 3 months'

Swedish toddlers could be protected from urinary tract infections if their parents took a leaf out of Vietnam's potty training book and cut short the use of nappies, a Swedish research study infers.

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Professor Anna-Lena Hellström at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Gothenburg has previously studied the link between diapers and UTIs, more specifically how children who cannot completely empty their bladder run a higher risk of infection.

She has now turned her attention to potty training in Vietnam where toddlers as young as three months go diaper-free.

"Never in our wildest dreams did we imagine you could start that young," Hellström told Dagens Nyheter (DN) newspaper.

Hellström said she was not issuing any official recommendations to Swedish parents, but said they had the right to know that it is possible to start potty-training earlier.

Her two-year study of 47 children showed that Vietnamese parents use whistling to help their children go to the toilet.

"And once they are on the potty, the child will completely empty their bladder instead of weeing a bit now and then, which children with diapers tend to do," Hellström told DN.

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