Adult cancer risk in women who were breastfed as infants: large UK prospective study

AbstractThere are known short-term benefits in breastfed infants versus bottle-fed infants in terms of lower risks of infection and obesity in infancy and childhood, but the long-term effect on the risk of adult cancers is unclear. In a cohort of 1 in 4 UK women born in 1935 –1950 we report the incidence of adult cancers in relation to having been breastfed in infancy. In median year 2001 (interquartile range 2000–2003) 548,741 women without prior cancer reported whether they had been breastfed. There was 81% agreement between women’s report of having been breastf ed and information on breastfeeding recorded when they were 2 years old. Participants were followed by record-linkage to national cancer registration, hospital admission and death databases. Cox regression yielded adjusted relative risks (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) by having been breast fed or not for eight cancer sites with >  2000 incident cases and for related conditions, where appropriate. Of the eight cancers examined here one association was highly statistically significant: an increase in colorectal cancer incidence among women who had been breastfed versus not (RR 1.18, 95% CI 1.12–1.24, n = 8651). To inve stigate further the findings for colorectal cancer, we studied eight other gastro-intestinal conditions, and found increased risks in women who had been breastfed versus not for benign colorectal polyps (RR 1.09, 95% CI 1.05–1.13, n = 17,677) and for appendicitis (RR 1...
Source: European Journal of Epidemiology - Category: Epidemiology Source Type: research