Xu L, et al. - The physicians performed a systematic review to investigate the association between breastfeeding in infancy and risk of Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC). This meta-analysis revealed that in infancy, breastfeeding protected against the development of CD and ulcerative colitis.

• Through November 2016, the physicians performed a systematic search of Medline/PubMed and Embase for full text, English-language literature.
• They included studies if they described breastfeeding in infancy in patients with CD or UC, and healthy controls.
• They pooled data using a random effects model for analysis.

• The physicians included 35 studies, in the final analysis, comprising 7536 individuals with CD, 7353 with UC and 330 222 controls.
• Ever being breastfed was correlated with a lower risk of CD (OR 0.71, 95% CI 0.59-0.85) and UC (OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.67-0.91).
• The magnitude of protection was significantly greater among Asians (OR 0.31, 95% CI 0.20-0.48) compared to Caucasians (OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.66-0.93; P = .0001) in CD, while this inverse association was observed in all ethnicity groups.
• With the strongest decrease in risk when breastfed for at least 12 months for CD (OR 0.20, 95% CI 0.08-0.50) and UC (OR 0.21, 95% CI 0.10-0.43) as compared to 3 or 6 months, breastfeeding duration demonstrated a dose-dependent association.