This is fascinating, and I'm glad you posted it.

I looked through the article, though, and there's absolutely no discussion about controlling for income. That's important because the chance to breastfeed is tied to social factors--the need to work, the availability of maternity leave, the office culture--that can be correlated with income, and income itself is one of the best predictors of health worldwide: higher income allows people to get better health care and take better care of themselves in general.

If the MS results from breastfeeding are really the results of income, the study not could not only give traditionalists a new reason to erroneously browbeat women into breastfeeding, it will continue to obscure the real reasons that people have differing MS outcomes, and keep us from addressing the income inequalities that underlie almost all health disparities.

I'm generally pro-breastfeeding and I hope the correlation reflects a real mechanism, but this is Epidemiology 101.

I had an argument with my neurologist over this very subject. He assumed I would restart my meds once I'd given birth. I told him I planned to breastfeed and I'd restart once we'd weaned. He was very dismissive but I told him to stuff it, essentially. For me, it was a pretty easy decision - I'd had a pretty mild course with MS by that point, and the known benefits of breastfeeding for both the baby and me vs. the possibility of maybe preventing or mitigating a possible relapse with meds. Now, 5 years later, 18 months into breastfeeding my second child, and I've been relapse free the entire time. Of course, MS is so variable it's possible that if I'd done nothing the last five years I still wouldn't have had a relapse, but I'm glad I trusted my instincts.

That is interesting. I think that Kris makes a very good point in that MS is a very unpredictable disease. My neurologist says that some with MS never even get diagnosed because the symptoms are so mild that they do not know to be checked out and then some of us have a much stronger reaction, but only very few flair ups. I don't know if breastfeeding can be directly attributed to the decrease in flair-ups in the patient, but it is good to know that when I do decide to have children I will have that choice back instead of a presupposition to not breast feed.

One of the members of the congregation I share has MS and has been symptom-free through her pregnancy and while she is breast-feeding.

I'd be interested in seeing if her symptoms ae lessened later