The longer women breast feed, the more they are protected against breast cancer, says a report to be published Saturday in British medical journal the Lancet.
A ten-year study by British scientists involving more than 150,000 women in 30 countries suggests that for every year of her life spent breastfeeding, a woman's risk of the disease drops by 4.3 percent. She enjoys a further 7 percent reduction for every baby to which she gives birth.
If women in the UK breastfed on average for an extra six months each, 1,000 cases of breast cancer and hundreds of deaths would be prevented each year.
"The lack of or short lifetime duration of breastfeeding typical of women in developed countries makes a major contribution to the high incidence of breast cancer in these countries," said scientists.
The developed countries have relatively high breast cancer rates because of the fact that women in these countries have chosen to have less children and to breast-feed them briefly or not at all.
"It is really the number of children and the duration of breast-feeding that is the key to the differences between development and developing countries" in breast cancer rates, the report said, quoting Valeries Beral, an Oxford University epidemiologist.
The findings also add to many recognized benefits of breast-feeding for children, such as better nutrition, a reduction in allergies, better immunity to infections and even higher intelligence in adulthood.
The study was carried out by analysts at Cancer Research UK, who pooled data from dozens of different studies into the benefits of breastfeeding.
(eastday.com July 20, 2002)
