Another potential way to reduce breast cancer risk: breast feeding

"Breast-feeding may protect at-risk women from breast cancer"

CNN STORY HIGHLIGHTS:

• Study: Nursing cut the risk of breast cancer in half for high-risk women
• Researchers followed 60,075 women for more than nine years
• Breast-feeding's effect was similar to taking tamoxifen for five years
• Breast-feeding didn't affect risk for women who didn't have breast cancer in family

We all probably know someone who has been affected by breast cancer. Fortunately, treatment is quite effective if the cancer is diagnosed and treated.

This new research sounds quite promising, but we probably still don't have enough evidence to make any claims about causality. We know that there is an association, but that's about it because this was a prospective cohort study. I don't think we're ever going to see any randomized controlled trials evaluating this clinical question, so this may be the best type of evidence we get.

Click here for the story on CNN.
Click here for the abstract from the Archives of Internal Medicine.