New research establishes strong link between lactation duration and a mother’s diabetes risk.
A new study has provided longitudinal biochemical evidence that lactation duration is independently associated with lower incidence of diabetes. The researchers however added that further investigation is required to elucidate mechanisms that may explain this relationship.
In the research published in the journal JAMA Intern Med, Erica et al noted that among young white and black women in the observational 30-year study, increasing lactation duration was associated with a strong, graded 25% to 47% relative reduction in the incidence of diabetes even after accounting for prepregnancy biochemical measures, clinical and demographic risk factors, gestational diabetes, lifestyle behaviors, and weight gain that prior studies did not address.
Lactation duration has shown weak protective associations with incident diabetes (3%-15% lower incidence per year of lactation) in older women based solely on self-report of diabetes, studies initiated beyond the reproductive period are vulnerable to unmeasured confounding or reverse causation from antecedent biochemical risk status, perinatal outcomes, and behaviors across the childbearing years.
Out of the 1238 women that participated in the study, 615 were black.
The study found that among young white and black women in the observational 30-year study, increasing lactation duration was associated with a strong, graded 25% to 47% relative reduction in the incidence of diabetes even after accounting for prepregnancy biochemical measures, clinical and demographic risk factors, gestational diabetes, lifestyle behaviors, and weight gain that prior studies did not address.
The study provides evidence to support the hypothesis that lactation may lower risk of diabetes in women; these findings open new avenues into mechanisms leading to glucose intolerance.
Read the original paper here.