Janelle Miles in The Weekend Australian:
The more babies a woman has, the less likely it is that she will get breast, colorectal, ovarian and uterine cancers, Australian research suggests.
Scientists at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research (QIMR) found increasing numbers of pregnancies were associated with a significantly reduced risk of certain cancers.
“The more children you have, the more protective it gets,” said medical health statistician Steven Darlington.
“It seems that an increase in the hormones produced during pregnancy are protecting against cancer, but we’re not quite sure exactly how or why that happens.”
He studied more than 1.2 million Swedish women, including about 25,000 who had delivered twins, to determine the effect of reproductive history on a number of different cancers.
More here.