A new study suggests that the longer infants are breastfed, the lower the likelihood they’ll be overweight as adolescents, a relationship that does not appear to be influenced by sociocultural factors.The findings, published in the journal Epidemiology, add to the not always consistent body of research on breastfeeding and childhood weight gain. While a number of studies have suggested that breastfed babies are less likely to become overweight than bottle-fed infants, others have found no such benefit or that the weight difference does not last far into childhood.In the new study, however, Harvard researchers found that even within a single family, children who were breastfed for a longer time were slightly less likely to become overweight than their siblings who were breastfed for a shorter period.The difference within families was similar to that found in the study population as a whole, where each 4-month increase in breastfeeding was linked to a 6 percent dip in the risk of becoming overweight by adolescence.Since siblings are raised under much the same circumstances, the findings “lend credence” to the idea that breastfeeding itself confers a weight benefit, Dr. Matthew W. Gillman, the study’s lead author, told Reuters Health.
