Researchers studied 64 breast milk samples from women infected with Covid-19. According to their study, it is unlikely that a mother will contaminate her child by breastfeeding him.
Can Covid-19 be transmitted through breast milk? To answer this question, scientists from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine and the University of California, Los Angeles (USA) published a study from August 19 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), an American peer-reviewed journal. They examined 64 samples from 18 Americans infected with Covid-19. If they discovered a trace of the virus in one of the samples, they noticed that it was incapable of duplicating itself and therefore of contaminating the infant.
“Detection of viral RNA does not equate to infection. It must grow and multiply to be infectious and we did not find this in any of our samplessaid Christina Chambers, a lead author of the study and a professor of pediatrics at the University of San Diego School of Medicine. Our results suggest that breast milk itself is unlikely to be a source of infection for the infant.”
Encourage continued breastfeeding
A result that the other main author of the study wishes to be reassuring for mothers. “In the absence of data, some women infected with SARS-CoV-2 chose not to breastfeed at allsays Grace Aldrovandi, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Mattel Children’s Hospital at the University of California, Los Angeles. We hope that our results and future studies will give women the confidence they need to breastfeed. Breast milk offers invaluable benefits to both mother and baby.”
Nowadays, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends, when breastfeeding, wash your hands regularly and wear a mask to avoid contaminating the child. Early breastfeeding is associated with a reduced risk of sudden infant death syndrome and childhood obesity, as well as improved immune health. In mothers, breastfeeding has been linked to lower risks of breast and ovarian cancer, cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
No risk detected in pasteurized milk
Here are certainly reassured mothers, but what about milk banks? The researchers inoculated the coronavirus into two breast milk samples from two different donors. After pasteurization with the Holder method – commonly used in these establishments which consists of heating the milk at 62.5° C for 30 minutes and then cooling it to 4° C – no infectious virus was detected in either of the two samples.
“This is a very positive finding for donor milk, which so many infants, especially those born prematurely, rely on.smiles Christina Chambers. Our results fill in some important gaps, but further studies are needed with larger sample sizes to confirm these results.” The researcher also hopes that research will be carried out on the transmission or not of active antiviral components protecting the infant from Covid-19.
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