According to researchers, mothers who breast-feed their babies receive long-term protection against a condition linked to diabetes and heart disease.

Scientists found that the longer a woman breast-fed her baby, the more she helped lower her chances of developing metabolic syndrome i. e. a cluster of risk factors like high blood pressure and high triglycerides associated with obesity.

According to Erica Gunderson, lead author, while pregnancy has some adverse effects on these cardiovascular risk factors, lactation (breast-feeding) helps off-set some of them.

Gunderson says, breast-feeding has a slightly stronger impact on the risk of metabolic syndrome in women who experience gestational or pregnancy-induced diabetes, finding that Kavitha T. Ram, a New York Medical College obstetrician/gynaecologist calls based drug, unlike other anti-virals does not target the virus itself, rather its target is a small RNA molecule in the liver required by hepatitis C for replicating.

SPC3649, by inhibiting the molecule, reduced hepatitis C virus levels in the liver and the bloodstream of chimpanzees by 350-fold, in those who had received the highest dose.

Importantly, no resistance was shown by the virus to SPC3649 developed by the Santaris Pharma A/S, a Denmark-based company. What’s more, months after the chimps ended treatment, the virus levels continued to remain low, raising the possibility the medicine needing to be taken only temporarily.

Study author Robert Lanford, a scientist with Southwest Foundation for Bio-medical Research, San Antonio, Texas says: ‘It is a conceptually new approach. Instead of directly targeting the virus, the drug targeted a liver-specific molecule necessary for replication. If we take that away from the virus, it can't replicate anymore.’

As Lanford explains, viruses replicate inside cells, requiring all the machinery inside the cell to accomplish this. But, the drug by taking away the host factor the virus needs for replicating, ensures the virus mutate to make it drug resistant.

The study has been published in the online edition of Science.

Hepatitis C spreads by contact with the blood of an infected person, ending in infecting the liver. About 70% to 80% with the virus exhibit no symptoms initially, however, over time, between 60% to 70% go on to develop chronic liver disease, which damages the liver and leads to formation of scar tissue, and eventually cirrhosis, including causing liver cancer.

There are about 170-million people infected with hepatitis C worldwide.