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Breast Feeding Works Miracles for Both Baby and Mother with MS

• Caroline says: These findings were released in advance of AAN's annual meeting this April. These are just fascinating. For the last decade, women with MS have often been encouraged to restart their MS meds soon after child birth to truncate or avoid relapse. Many avoid breast feeding their babies to do so. This article suggests that women actually may be better off breast feeding their babies because it delays their menstrual cycle a bit longer (estrogen!) More studies are needed, though this is food for thought if you are pregnant or planning pups sometime in the future.

AAN 2009: Breast-Feeding May Reduce Multiple Sclerosis Relapses

Allison Gandey

February 23, 2009 — Women who have multiple sclerosis (MS) may reduce their risk for relapse after pregnancy if they breast-feed, a new study suggests. “Our findings call into question the benefit of choosing not to breast-feed or stopping breast-feeding early in order to start taking MS therapies,” lead author Annette Langer-Gould, MD, from Stanford University, in California, said in a news release.

The study findings were released February 19 by the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) in advance of their presentation in April at the upcoming AAN 61st Annual Meeting, in Seattle, Washington.

Our findings call into question the benefit of choosing not to breast-feed or stopping breast-feeding early in order to start taking MS therapies.

The study is expected to raise some eyebrows at the meeting. “This is controversial,” Dr. Langer-Gould told Medscape Neurology & Neurosurgery. For nearly a decade, many physicians have encouraged MS patients to restart medication as quickly as possible after pregnancy, and many women have chosen not to breast-feed their babies for this reason.

These new results suggest breast-feeding and the suppression of menses significantly reduce the risk for postpartum relapses in MS.

The investigators prospectively followed 32 pregnant women with MS and 29 age-matched pregnant controls. They conducted structured interviews to assess clinical, menstrual, and breast-feeding history during each trimester and up to a year after the women gave birth. Investigators adjusted hazards ratios for measures of disease severity and age.

Just over half (52%) of women with MS did not breast-feed or began regular supplemental bottle feedings within 2 months postpartum. Most of the women experienced a relapse as compared with those who breast-fed exclusively for at least 2 months (adjusted hazard ratio, 7.1; 95% CI, 2.1 – 24.3; P = .002).

Postpartum Relapse Based on Breast-Feeding Status
Breast-Feeding Relapse (%)
None or some with supplemental bottle feedings 87
Exclusively 36

The majority of MS patients reported that the primary reason for forgoing breast-feeding was to resume medications.

The researchers show that women who began taking MS treatments within the first 2 months after giving birth had significantly higher risk of suffering a relapse than women with MS who did not start taking medications early — regardless of whether they breast-fed.

Those who breast-fed exclusively reportedly resumed their menstrual periods later than the women who did not breast-feed or began early supplemental feedings.

“We’ve studied the effect of circulatory estrogens on women with breast or ovarian cancers, but we haven’t done this in women with autoimmune diseases,” Dr. Langer-Gould pointed out. “There could be some answers there as to why the end of pregnancy appears to have a highly protective effect on women with MS.”

But, the group is quick to point out, larger studies are needed to determine whether women should delay taking MS medications in order to breast-feed. Dr. Langer-Gould and her team are currently pursuing a larger follow-up study with a group of Toronto-based researchers.

This study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Wadsworth Foundation.

American Academy of Neurology 61st Annual Meeting. Released February 19, 2009.

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