Breastfeeding protects against breast cancer

A longer duration of breastfeeding has been shown to be a protective factor against breast cancer, according to recent research. Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women. A family history of the disease, early puberty, late menopause and not having children are factors that increase the chance of a woman developing the disease. Although childbearing is known to protect against breast cancer, whether or not breastfeeding contributes to this protective effect was unclear. Therefore researchers at the Cancer Research UK Epidemiology Unit in Oxford analysed data from 47 studies done in 30 countries of 50,000 women with breast cancer and 100,000 healthy volunteers (controls). Women with breast cancer had, on an average, fewer births than did the controls i.e. (2·2% vs 2·6%). Furthermore, fewer women with cancer than the controls had ever breastfed (71% vs 79%), and their average lifetime duration of breastfeeding was shorter (9·8 vs 15·6 months). The team also found that for every year a woman breastfeeds, it cuts her risk of breast cancer by 4.3% in addition to a decrease of 7% for each birth. The longer women breastfeed the more they are protected against breast cancer. The lack of or a short lifetime duration of breast feeding, typical of women in developed countries is a major contributory factor for the high incidence of breast cancer in these countries. This should encourage more women to consider breastfeeding their babies for a longer duration. The scientists are not sure how childbirth and breastfeeding reduce breast cancer risk but they believe that it is likely to do with hormones and reproductive behaviour and the findings could pave the way for better prevention and treatment methods.