Paris - Children who are exclusively breast-fed in infancy enjoy the equivalent benefits in cardiac health as those who exercise regularly and restrict their salt intake,a study suggests.
The benefit was spotted in research carried out in Denmark and Estonia into nearly 2 200 children aged nine to 15 to identify risk factors for coronary heart disease.
Breastfeeding scored best on systolic blood pressure - one of the two key indicators of cardiac wellbeing.
Children who were exclusively breastfed for six months had a much lower systolic reading than counterparts who had been partially breastfed or fed only infant formula. And the longer the child had been breastfed, the better the score.
But breastfeeding had no apparent impact on levels of cholesterol or insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes.
The study appears in Archives of Disease in Childhood, a specialist British publication.
The lead author is Debbie Lawlor, of the University of Bristol's Department of Social Medicine, in western England.