Breastmilk Harbors Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2

An abundance of immunoglobulin antibodies, and a paucity of viral RNA, in breastmilk offer evidence that women can safely continue breastfeeding during the pandemic.   Ashley Yeager.    Nov 17, 2020

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/breastmilk-harbors-antibodies-to-sars-cov-2-68162

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Published today:  Marketing BreastFEEDING Substitutes: A Discussion Document  https://www.mdpi.com/919770  Open Access. Share. Comment box on right side of page. Marketing influences knowledge, attitudes, and decisions related to infant and young child nutrition, safety, development, parental confidence, and other aspects of health and wellbeing of the child. These attitudes and behaviours of parents, health workers, policy makers, and other influencers have short- and long-term effects on the child. There is an International Code of Marketing of Breast-Milk Substitutes. Is it time to have a code of marketing of breastfeeding substitutes?

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NEW Updates on Breastfeeding, Infant Feeding, Breast Milk and COVID-19 – excerpts from scientific journal articles –  6 November 2020

Special repository on Breastfeeding, Infant Feeding, Breast Milk and COVID-19. Since our last update Friday 23 October 2020, we have added 28 NEW publications for:

·  October (23 new) ·  April (1 new)
·  June (3 new)
·  May (1 new)

Click here to view the updated repository

All publications provide emerging evidence related to COVID-19 and

  • Breastfeedingand breast milk
  • Infant feeding recommendations
  • Feeding difficulties in newborns

Six articles reported the results of breast milk samples tested for SARS-CoV-2, including two systematic reviews (Neef et al., 2020)(Han et al., 2020), and found all to be negative. Furman and Noble (2020) note that while Holder pasteurization successfully inactivates SARS-CoV-2, it also reduces protective antibodies in human milk; therefore, they recommend infected mothers should continue directly breastfeeding their infants.

Four articles specifically promote breastfeeding of newborns when the mother has COVID-19, emphasizing the loss of protective health benefits to newborns when breastfeeding is interrupted (Vogel et al., 2020)(Demirci, 2020)(Bhandari et al., 2020)(Bhutta et al., 2020). Another article provides specific guidelines for breastfeeding mothers with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 (Sullivan et al., 2020).

Giampreti et al. (2020) evaluated the safety of medications used to treat COVID-19 among pregnant and lactating women. Fox et al. (2020) analyzed breast milk samples from 15 donors previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, observing a robust immune response to SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. The authors suggest these findings warrant further investigation of the therapeutic use of extracted milk antibodies, as well as possible protective effects for breastfed infants.

The next update for this specific repository will be on Friday 20 November, 2020. If you know anyone who would benefit from these updates, please let me know.

Happy reading!

Mija Ververs

 

 

Mija-tesse VERVERS
Emergency Response and Recovery Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Atlanta
Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Baltimore
USA (+1) 443-707-9769 email: mververs@cdc.gov and mververs@jhu.edu

 

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