The home experiment of a nursing mother after being vaccinated against COVID that demonstrates the presence of antibodies in breast milk

When a breastfeeding woman receives a vaccine, her body begins to make antibodies in response to that vaccination that can appear in milk, offering additional protection to her baby.

With the progress in the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 in our country, there are many lactating mothers at high risk of contagion (such as health professionals) who are being vaccinated, and some are showing in a very visual way what happens in your milk a few days after you get the vaccine.

Such is the case of Verónica Pleguezuelo, doctor, lactation consultant and nursing mother who has published a shocking photograph that shows a positive antibody test against COVID carried out with breast milk , just 15 after receiving the second dose of the vaccine .

A home experiment that has gone viral

As we can read in the publication shared on Facebook, Verónica received the first dose of the COVID vaccine on January 12 and the second on February 2. Two weeks later, he decided to do a rapid blood antibody test, to check if he had already generated IgG antibodies, which are the long-lasting antibodies that the body makes after passing a disease or receiving a vaccine.

With a positive result in blood, the woman set out to check what would happen if the same test was performed with a few drops of breast milk , since the test is valid for both blood, serum and plasma (breast milk contains serum proteins ). As with the blood, the antibody test also came back positive.

This same experiment was shared days before on the Facebook page of the Briarvista Pediatrics maternal and child center, in the United States. In this case, it was also a doctor from Georgia who decided to test with breast milk after verifying that her blood antibodies were very high after receiving the vaccine.

In the text published on social networks, it is explained in a very detailed way how vaccine antibodies work in breast milk , and what effect these antibodies have on the baby’s health.

Who else thinks science is cool?

Dr. Wexler did a little science experiment for everyone. As you know, she has already received her vaccinations against COVID-19. Vaccines work similar to other vaccines on the market , by inducing your body to create antibodies (IgG) against this foreign substance. (Vaccine side effects, ranging from a sore arm to fever, chills, body aches, and headaches, are a sign that the immune system is working to generate antibodies, and they are very short. I experienced).

12 days after her second dose, Dr. Wexler took a blood test and found a very strong antibody response (this is the first image seen in the photo that is unwritten). The ′ C ′ is the control line (so you know the test is not faulty) and you can see a very dark line for IgG and even a faint line for IgM. This means that after the vaccination there were enough antibodies in a drop of blood from your finger to be detected. But that is not all!

Dr. Wexler went further and decided to test her breast milk as well . As you can see, there is also a strong IgG response!

Will IgG in breast milk really protect your baby if he’s exposed to COVID-19? The antibodies in breast milk are known as “passive immunity,” which means that they will help fight disease, but they do not induce the baby’s immune system to create its own antibodies. Any antibodies that reach the digestive system will stay for a short time in case they are needed, and if not, they will be broken down by the baby’s immune system as they are foreign substances to the baby as well.

A baby who is breastfeeding several times a day will have continuous exposure to the mother’s antibodies (for all diseases to which she is immune), and may have a less severe course of disease, but is not actually immune to the disease.

Proof of this is that when we tested Dr. Wexler’s baby, there was hardly a shaded line for IgG antibodies.

Antibodies in breast milk are predominantly IgA, for which we don’t have a test. But we can hope that if there is IgG in the mother, there could also be IgA.

The attached article under the photo (you can read it here) explains the passive immunity of breast milk . We have received many questions from nursing mothers about the safety of the vaccine while breastfeeding. Hope this helps you understand that the vaccine is not only safe, but that it is probably beneficial for the baby . Although we do not yet have a vaccine for mothers, fathers and caregivers of children, we urge everyone to get it as soon as it is available.

Breastfeeding and COVID

Breast milk is known for its immunological properties , transferring protective antibodies from mother to baby to prevent infections and allergies. At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, this premise served the researchers to study whether breast milk could also contain antibodies against this virus, and as expected, the results were positive among those women who had had the disease.

Later studies also found that breast milk is capable of killing 95% of live COVID strains, so coronavirus infection could be inhibited, as well as suppressive effects on bacteria and viruses like HIV.

Regarding the passage of antibodies through milk after the mother receives a vaccine , it is to be assumed that the vaccine against COVID will act in the same way as vaccines against other viruses. In fact, on the e-lactancia website we can read the following:

“As after vaccination against other viruses, in the milk of lactating mothers vaccinated against COVID-19, antibodies generated by the vaccine could be excreted in the form of IgA, which would protect the infant from COVID-19″

Since we have been vaccinating against COVID for a short time and there are no studies of the vaccine in nursing mothers, further research is necessary. But without a doubt, these types of home experiments are especially impressive and visually show us what could happen in breast milk after vaccination.

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