Breastfeeding helps lower risk of cancer, says study
Reported August 13, 2009
WASHINGTON: Women who have watched a mother, sibling or child battle breast cancer can become understandably preoccupied, if not obsessed, with trying to reduce their own risk of the disease. One possible way to do that? Breast-feed.
In a study just published online in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School analysed data on 60,075 women who had given birth and who had provided information about, among many other things, their breast-feeding practices.
Earlier studies had hinted that breast-feeding might lower a woman’s chance of developing the disease, but those results were far from conclusive.
Findings of this new study seem clearer. Researchers found that those women who had a so-called first-degree relative with breast cancer were less likely to develop pre-menopausal breast cancer if they had breast-fed.
Duration of breast-feeding did not affect risk, the study said, nor did whether the women supplemented breast milk with formula, nor did whether the women experienced a cessation of menstruation. Just the act of breast-feeding.
No such connection was found in women who did not have a family history of breast cancer.
In this study, the researchers conclude: ‘The observed 59 per cent reduction in risk compares favourably with hormonal treatments such as Tamoxifen for women at high risk for breast cancer.
‘Moreover, breast-feeding is associated with multiple other health benefits for both mother and child. The data suggests that women with a family history of breast cancer should be strongly encouraged to breast-feed.’
‘I was sort of stunned,’ said Dr Alison Stuebe, the first author of the study and an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
‘It’s an impressive reduction in risk. Other studies either hadn’t looked at this or didn’t include enough women with a family history to find a statistically significant difference,’ she said.
More research is needed to replicate the findings and to show that the reduced risk is the result of breast-feeding, rather than some other factor common to women who breast-feed.
But Dr Stuebe suggested that breast- feeding may prove just as effective a strategy for high-risk women as the use of Tamoxifen, a drug that interferes with oestrogen activity. It is often used to reduce chances of breast cancer in high-risk women.
Though breast-feeding is promoted primarily because it is linked to better health in babies, mothers, too, seem to accrue long-term advantages.
Studies have found that women who breast-fed are less likely to develop osteoporosis and ovarian cancer, as well as high blood pressure and heart disease decades later.
Because women who breast-feed tend to be more educated and to have higher incomes than those who bottle-feed, disentangling the effects of lactation from those of other habits and behaviour can be difficult.
Source : The Straits Times
