Breast is best to cut risk of eczema as a teenager

Breastfed babies are less likely than bottle-fed infants to suffer from eczema as teenagers, a study of 17,000 mothers and their children in Belarus has suggested.

The Promotion of Breastfeeding Intervention Trial encouraged the mothers to breastfeed for six months in the Nineties and it was later found their children had a 54 per cent reduced risk of the skin disorder at 16.

The implications are obvious for the UK as it has one of the world’s lowest breastfeeding rates, with just one in three babies receiving breast milk at six months, researchers said in the journal JAMA Paediatrics.