Breastmilk: key to preventing allergies?

Exposure to allergens via breastmilk could be essential to instructing a child’s immune system to prevent future allergies, says a team of international researchers led by the Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Centre for Immunology and Breastfeeding at The University of Western Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute. 

And this type of allergen exposure is very different from exposure via formula, solid food or the environment. Breastmilk contains a multitude of food and airborne allergens, already digested by the mother and delivered at potentially optimal levels and together with thousands of bioactive compounds to breastfeeding babies.

See the team’s full findings in this open access article published by the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: 'Allergen shedding in human milk: Could it be key for immune system education and allergy prevention?'

Meet the team here.

Their work brings us closer to the understanding required to build evidence-based, efficient allergy prevention interventions for lactating mothers. Eczema, asthma, food allergies – breastmilk just might have the potential to alleviate these growing, global disease burdens.

FLRF is grateful to help sponsor such important research.

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