A group of scientists and clinicians from the legendary Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston (USA) concluded a future study that There is a link between breastfeeding and the risk of colorectal cancer in adulthood.. The research focused on studying more than 158,000 women.
The prestige of this biomedical institution and the fact that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) of the United States is funding this work is a guarantee that the results become alert regardless of the controversy they will raise in society.
As highlighted by its lead authors, doctors Chen Yuan and Kimmie Ng, in the study found in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology, “Breastfeeding in childhood is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer in adulthood, even among young adults. However, more research is needed to understand the underlying biological mechanisms, he said This association does not establish causation“.
With the caution required by this information, endorsed by these Dana-Farber scientists, we insist that these findings should not discourage breastfeeding, which offers many advantages for mothers and children.
This study – insist its authors – highlights the need to investigate the biological mechanisms underlying the association between breastfeeding and the risk of colorectal cancer, including the role of the microbiome or other pathways, as well as formulating possible interventions to reduce risk.
Various statistics agree with that Rates of early-onset colorectal cancer have increased since the early 1990s.
Breastfeeding and colorectal cancer
Now, this Dana Farber team is evaluating the data collected on Nurses’ Health Study (66,634 women from 46 to 93 years old) and the Nurses’ Health Study IIwith 92,062 women, between 27 and 68 years old. A total of 158,696.
The conclusions are: breastfed in infancy associated with a 23% increased risk of colorectal cancer in the future. Among the people of Nurses’ Health Study IIa study that enrolled a young group of nurses born between the years 1947 and 1964, breastfeeding during early childhood was associated with an increased risk of high-risk colorectal adenomas on the left before the age of 50 and colorectal cancer before the age of 50. 55 years.
In the section result, the authors of this prospective study stated, among other things, that “during 3.5 million person-years of follow-up, we identified 1,490 cases of incident colorectal cancer (CRC ) in both groups. Breastfeeding is associated with a 23% (95% confidence interval, 10%-38%) increased risk of this carcinoma. The risk of CRC increases with the duration of breastfeeding. These findings were confirmed using breastfeeding information from the mothers of a subset of participants. Consistently, 30 was associated with an increased risk of CRC in participants aged ≤55 years. (hazard ratio, 1.38; 95% CI).
Finally, some lines about Dr. Kimmie Ng. He is currently associate chief of the Division of Gastrointestinal Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor at Harvard Medical School. He is co-director of the Colon and Rectal Cancer Center and director of translational research for the division. He is also the founding director of the Young-Onset Colorectal Cancer Center.
