Breast-fed children have less probability of getting breast cancer as adults

 

 

 

We already know that breast milk is the best source of nourishment for the new born baby. Now, there is more good news from the breast-feeding world. A study conducted by Dr. Hazel B. Nichols and colleagues (University of Wisconsin, Madison) shows that women who were breast-fed as infants seemed to run a lower risk (about 17 percent reduction) of developing breast cancer as adults in comparison to those who were not breast-fed.

 

The study was conducted taking a sample of 2016 women in the age range of 20 to 69 years suffering from breast cancer and 1960 women who did not have the ailment. It was found that women who were breast-fed as infants ran a lower risk of developing breast cancer and amongst the women who were breast-fed, the ones who were fourth or fifth born had fared much better than the first-borns in terms of vulnerability to the malignant tumor.

 

Generally, as mentioned in the medical journal Epidemiology by Dr. Nichols and colleagues, the age of the mother at childbirth is seen to bear a relationship to the amount of contaminants present in her breast milk and studies have tried to link up the accumulation of the contaminants to the increased risk of breast cancer. But in the case of adult women who were breast-fed, the mother's age at childbirth did not seem to have any altered impact on the degree of their proneness to breast-cancer. It was also observed that in the case of women who were not breast-fed as infants, the higher the age of the mother at childbirth the lower the risk of their developing breast cancer. However, in the women who were not breast-fed as infants their birth order did bear any relationship with their breast cancer proneness.

 

On the whole, according to Dr. Nichols, though a link has been established between a women's vulnerability to breast cancer and her being breast-fed as an infant, there is still a long way to go. The impact of duration of breast feeding and the amount of environmental contaminants present in breast milk on breast-fed women is yet to be studied.

 

Breast milk differs from formula milk in terms of its nutrient content. Non nutritive factors like hormone factors, immune factors, growth factors and prostaglandins that have an impact on the risk developing breast cancer are found to be different in the case of breast milk and formula milk. Moreover, the feeding habits of breast-fed and formula milk- fed infants differ increasing the risk of breast cancer in the latter case. More importantly, environmental pollutants are also found in larger quantities in formula milk. There is a hypothesis saying that a transmissible agent in breast milk increases the risk of breast cancer but this has not been established yet.