Rheumatoid Arthritis and Breast-Feeding in Korea: The Fifth Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2010-2012)

Abstract

Female hormonal and reproductive factors such as breast-feeding, oral contraception and early life factors are reported to be implicated in the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. In order to assess the association of rheumatoid arthritis and breast-feeding, we analyzed the data from 4,584 women of aged 40-64 with using the 5 th KNHANES. As results, breast-feeding duration (>24M) was significantly associated with preventing the rheumatoid arthritis and was also observed the trend of longer breast-feeding duration and lowering rheumatoid arthritis. BMI (<18.5) was also the contributing factor on increasing the risk of rheumatoid arthritis, while age at menarche, education level, smoking and use of oral contraceptives were not related with the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. It might be important to recommend the proper breast-feeding duration policy and further research on the factors of the biological mechanism to prevent the rheumatoid arthritis onset and developing burden in the future.