France has a very high consumption of soft cheeses/raw milk cheeses, where
the bacterium associated with Crohn's -- Mycobacterium Paratuberculosis
(MAP)-- thrives.  This bacterium could be passed through breastmilk. MAP is
also the link between the BCG vaccine and Crohn's shown in this study,
although the study text also reveals links between polio and smallpox
vaccines with Crohn's. The authors discuss the BF link delicately and
suggest it may be the high environmental contamination in France. What's up
with the bedsharing and Crohn's? The authors suggest it's associated with
the links between higher disease exposures and Crohn's. I assume there
could also be some inverse relationship whereas the infants on their way to
developing Crohn's were more colicky and unhappy, leading to more
bedsharing, and those with more diseases in general may have earned their
place in the parental bed more often as well. Luckily, there are other
diseases such as M.S. that are reduced with more disease exposures. Here's
the link to the full-text of the Baron article:
http://gut.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/54/3/357

And here's a meta-analysis review of 17 other articles showing reduced
Crohn's with breastfeeding:   http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/80/5/1342

Am J Clin Nutr. 2004 Nov;80(5):1342-52.
Breastfeeding and risk of inflammatory bowel disease: a systematic review
with meta-analysis.
Klement E, Cohen RV, Boxman J, Joseph A, Reif S.

Koret School of Veterinary Medicine, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
Rehovot, Israel. [log in to unmask]

BACKGROUND: It has long been believed that breastfeeding provides
protection against ulcerative colitis and Crohn disease. Studies designated
to test this hypothesis were conducted without reaching conclusive results.
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this meta-analysis was to examine the role of
breastfeeding in preventing inflammatory bowel disease and to summarize the
evidence gathered about this subject. DESIGN: A meta-analysis was performed
on 17 relevant articles that were found by using MEDLINE, EMBASE, the
Internet, and articles' references. The publications were fully reviewed
and divided, on the basis of their quality, into 3 groups. RESULTS: Studies
showed heterogeneous results. The pooled odds ratios of all the 17 reviewed
studies, calculated according to the random-effects model, were 0.67 (95%
CI: 0.52, 0.86) for Crohn disease and 0.77 (0.61, 0.96) for ulcerative
colitis. However, only 4 studies for Crohn disease and 4 for ulcerative
colitis were eventually included in the highest quality group. In this
group, the pooled odds ratio was 0.45 (0.26, 0.79) for Crohn disease and
0.56 (0.38, 0.81) for ulcerative colitis. CONCLUSIONS: The results of this
meta-analysis support the hypothesis that breastfeeding is associated with
lower risks of Crohn disease and ulcerative colitis. However, because only
a few studies were graded to be of high quality, we suggest that further
research, conducted with good methodology and large sample sizes, should be
carried out to strengthen the validity of these observations.

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