Breast milk contains beneficial microorganisms for the development of the immune system. For this reason, feeding a baby in his first month of life will have a decisive influence on the health of the rest of his life. Now, it has also been discovered that the lower bacterial diversity of babies makes them more likely to develop allergies during infancy.
This is the conclusion reached by a study prepared by the Fundación per al Foment de la Investigació Sanitària i Biomèdica de la Comunitat Valenciana (Fisabio), the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA-CSIC) and the University of Linköping ( Sweden).
It is a “unique” fluid
The discovery, published in the scientific journal ‘Pediatr Allergy Immunol’, has been possible after analyzing the composition, richness and bacterial diversity of the breast milk of 40 women one month after delivery and monitoring the children during the first seven years of life, in order to check if they developed allergies as they grew older.
Alejandro Mira, director of the Oral Microbiome research group at Fisabio-Salud Pública, explains that breast milk is a “unique” fluid that, in addition to nutritional elements, naturally contains bacteria and other microorganisms that are beneficial:
“It is the way that human evolution has found for the transmission of bacteria from mother to baby.”
Researchers have verified the existence of different bacterial recognition patterns by the immune system between children with allergies and healthy children, although “they are not significant” due to the great variability between individuals. “More studies and more scientific evidence are needed on the relationship between breastfeeding-microbiota-immunoglobulins and health”, has remarked Mª Carmen Collado, a researcher at the IATA-CSIC.
The samples analyzed are breast milk one month after delivery, taken for seven years by the team of immunologist Maria Jenmalm in Sweden. They were frozen at 80 degrees below zero until current technology has allowed us to analyze the composition in bacteria.
What influences the composition of breast milk?
This finding confirms the role of breastfeeding in early neonatal colonization, in adequate immune maturation during childhood and its influence on the health of the child and the future adult.
Thus, it reinforces previous data from the authors of the work, who observed differences at one month of life in the recognition patterns of bacteria by antibodies in children who developed allergies during childhood.
The next step will be to try to find out why the breast milk of some mothers is less rich in bacteria than that of other women, as well as to explore the factors that influence the composition of the microbiota in breast milk. In this way, a future question would be: can the microbiota of breast milk be modulated?
Some of the possible ways of modulation would be dietary interventions or the use of probiotics, prebiotics and postbiotics, although it would be necessary to check whether they have an effect on the composition of breast milk and to evaluate their functional role in reducing the risk of allergies and other diseases. .
Via | Ministry of Health of the Generalitat Valenciana
Photos | iStock
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