In a new study of over 7,000 older Chinese women published online today in the journal Rheumatology, breastfeeding - especially for a longer duration - is shown to be associated with a lower risk of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Specifically, it showed that women who had breastfed their children were around half as likely to have RA, compared to women who had never breastfed.The beneficial effects of breastfeeding for both mother and child are widely known, but previous studies on the association between breastfeeding and RA have been mixed.

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