Breastfeeding during the first six months reduces risk of Crohn’s disease: Montreal study

Children who are exclusively breastfed for the first six months may subsequently have a lower risk of suffering from Crohn ‘s disease, according to Montreal researchers.

The risks could also be increased by introducing solid foods to babies within their first three to six months.

“We observed a very clear trend towards a reduction in the risk of Crohn ‘s disease in subjects who had breast milk exclusively for at least six months,” said author of the study, Canisius Fantodji.

Fantodji is also a doctoral student in epidemiology and immunology at the Armand-Frappier Santé Biotechnologie at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS).

If these results are consistent with what is already found in the scientific literature, it would be the first time that introducing solid foods can be linked to increasing the risk of Crohn ‘s disease.

“This is an innovative result that will open up new avenues as to the origin of these inflammatory bowel diseases,” said Fantodji.

Breastfeeding for the first six months, however, would have no impact on the risk of another inflammatory bowel disease like ulcerative colitis.

Using antibiotics during the first six months was also associated with a reduced risk of Crohn ‘s disease and ulcerative colitis in this study.

Exposure to secondhand smoke during this period was associated with a 23 per cent increased risk of Crohn’s disease, especially in adulthood. It’s also known to increase the risk of smoking later in life.

Inflammatory bowel diseases affect about one in a 100 Canadians, said Dr. Prévost Jantchou of CHU Sainte-Justine, and the challenge is finding therapies that can help patients, but also “preventative approaches.”

“The central crux of this work is that everything is established in the first three years of life,” said Dr. Jantchou. “Our hypothesis was that everything that happens between birth (and the third birthday) can have an influence.”

Close to 1,000 people registered with the Régie de l’assurance-maladie du Québec and have requested care for Crohn ‘s disease, and nearly 600 people who are suffering from ulcerative colitis agreed to participate in this study.

About 1,000 people who don’t suffer from either problem served as a control group, explained Marie-Claude Rousseau, who supervised Fantodji’s doctoral thesis at INRS.

“We have about 2,700 participants who agreed to answer a questionnaire, either online or by phone,” she said. “And for this study, we only analzyed a small portion of the information that we collected.”

The researchers note that all these factors from breastfeeding to secondhand smoke, are likely to influence the composition of the gut microbiota.

“The first three years of life is the period where everything falls into place in terms of the immune system and especially in terms of the intestinal microbiota,” added Fantodji.

The intestinal microbiota is a major player in the manifestation of these diseases, said Dr. Jantchou, and several animal models have demonstrated that a dysfunction in the microbiota can cause an excessive reaction of the immune system.

These results are even more important because inflammatory bowel diseases remain “incurable” for the moment, added Fantodji.

While it has been shown that some people have a greater genetic susceptibility to it than others, there is currently very little information about modifiable risk factors.

The impact of this study could go beyond inflammatory bowel disease, said Dr. Jantchou.

“Studies like this around modifiable factors can lead to recommendations (…) for other diseases in which the microbiota will intervene and create autoimmune diseases like as asthma and eczema,” he concluded.

The findings of the study were published in the medical journal Digestive and Liver Disease.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews