Chances are, if you are pregnant or planning for a pregnancy, one of the last things on your mind is the onset of arthritis. There are enough contingencies to prepare for and areas of concern to fill your mind in the here and now without fast-forwarding 30 years into your body’s future. But if you’re contemplating breast-feeding your baby, developing rheumatoid arthritis may be something you never have to worry about.

A new study led by Mitra Pikwer and colleagues at Sweden’s Malmo University Hospital has shown that women who breast-feed their babies for longer than 12 months are less likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis over time. The researchers studied 136 women with rheumatoid arthritis and 544 women in the same age group who did not have the painful joint condition. The duration of breast-feeding played a dramatic role in their findings. Among those women who breast-feed for up to 12 months, researchers found that they cut their chances of getting the disease by 25 percent. In addition, the study showed that women who breast-feed for 13 months or more are only half as likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis as women who have never breast-fed.

"Although it is difficult to separate the effect of breast-feeding from that of childbirth, our data suggest that rheumatoid arthritis is inversely associated with long-term breast-feeding, rather than with the number of children born," researchers reported.

Breast-feeding has been linked to a reduced risk of rheumatoid arthritis by previous research and now, as was the case then, researchers still are unsure of why. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that causes inflammation and intense pain in the joints when the body essentially turns on itself, attacking healthy joint tissue as it would a foreign object. Little is know about the exact cause of the illness, but preventative measures are welcome wherever they are found – as in the case of this study. Since the disease is chronic and progressive, methods of prevention are as important to its study as possible cures to researchers.

While typically the onset of rheumatoid arthritis could be decades away for most new mothers, these new findings can be comforting added information when taken in conjunction with other benefits for themselves as well as for their children. Other research has shown that breast-feeding can lower the mother’s risk of contracting ovarian and breast cancer as well.

The findings of the Swedish study may not be the deciding factor in whether or not you choose to breast-feed (or even how long you plan to continue to do so); the information can be a useful and important addition to the decision-making process. And in the process of pregnancy and becoming a new mother, the more information you have available, the better.

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