Women who have breastfed at least one child have a lower risk of cancer of the uterus, according to a recent study.
The QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute study examined data from more than 26,000 women with at least one child, including nearly 9,000 women with uterine cancer.
Researcher Susan Jordan noted that they looked at the total amount of time these women had spent breastfeeding over the course of their lives and found that women who had ever breastfed had an 11 per cent lower risk of developing uterine cancer than women who had never breastfed.
The researchers also looked at how long the women had breastfed individual children for and found that the longer women breastfed each child, the more their risk of uterine cancer reduced, up until about nine months when the reduction in risk plateaued, Jordan said.
She added, "When women breastfed for between three and six months, their risk dropped by about seven per cent per child compared to women with children who didn't breastfeed. And when women breastfed for between six and nine months, their risk dropped by 11 per cent for each child they nursed."
"In other words, a woman who breastfed two children for nine months each had around a 22 per cent lower risk of uterine cancer than a woman who had never breastfed her children," she explained.
Jordan concluded, "For a whole range of reasons, some women are either unable to breastfeed, or struggle with breastfeeding. While it's important not to put more pressure on these women, this study suggests that supporting women to breastfeed could help reduce the incidence of uterine cancer."
The findings are published in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology.
