Disease Proof

New research suggests that breast-fed infants may have a lower risk of developing breast cancer. Reuters reports:

"However, we did not observe this reduction when we looked specifically among first-born women," said Nichols, of the University of Wisconsin, in Madison.

A woman's age at childbirth helps predict the levels of environmental contaminants in her breast milk, and studies have suggested a possible link between increased breast cancer risk and the accumulation of these contaminants, Nichols and colleagues note in the medical journal Epidemiology…

...However, in analyses restricted to breast-fed women, those with 3 or more older siblings had a lesser risk for breast cancer than first born women, the researchers found. But breast-fed women showed no altered breast cancer risk according to their mothers' age at childbirth.

Among women who were not breast-fed, reduced adult breast cancer risk was linked with their mothers' older age at childbirth, but the investigators identified no association between breast cancer risk and birth order in this group.

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