- Parents share breast milk with COVID-19 antibodies in an effort to help protect their children.
- It is unclear how protective the milk is, and it can be dangerous to share outside a milk bank.
- Lactating women who give antibody-rich milk to their older children are harmless, but it may not be worth it.
- Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.
Some parents who want to protect their children from COVID-19 turn to an unconventional elixir: breast milk that contains COVID-19 antibodies.
Some who can or can no longer breastfeed seek it out from moms in their communities or online, and other lactating women sneak it into their meals from their older children, reports Kevin Dugan of Intelligencer.
Research has shown that mothers who have been vaccinated and previously infected with protective COVID-19 antibodies develop in their breast milk.
But it is unclear how effective it is to prevent diseases in babies, how much milk provides protection and how long the protection will last. Sharing breast milk outside a milk bank can also be risky, and most children are not as easily infected by COVID-19 as young and older adults, nor are they as sick as they are.
But some parents say that using breast milk is a risk to take if there is no vaccine approved for infants. “If there’s a way I can do something that gives my child some protection, I want to try it,” said Courtney Carson, a four-month-old mother in Brooklyn with whom Dugan interviewed fed, told Good Morning America.
What we know about COVID-19 antibodies in breast milk
Early in the pandemic, research showed how moms who had COVID-19 could carry protective antibodies in the womb and through breast milk.
Study author Rebecca Powell told Insider her recent research, still published in a peer-reviewed journal, showed that protection appears to last up to ten months, the longest her team has been able to keep previously infected mothers on. to track.
“We find that these antibodies are really very durable over time, which is amazing,” said Powell, an assistant professor of medicine and infectious diseases at the Icahn School of Medicine in Mount Sinai.
However, she encourages everyone, including breastfeeding people who have had COVID-19. Not only safer than getting COVID-19, recent studies have shown that pregnant people who receive a COVID-19 vaccine also transmit antibodies to their babies in the womb and through breast milk, which can potentially help newborns fight the virus. protect when they are most vulnerable.
But there is still much to learn about how strong and long-lasting protection against COVID-19 vaccine in infants is, as well as whether one vaccine is better for breastfeeding mothers than others. “If the research interest and money was there, we could always design vaccinations with a view to breastfeeding women,” Powell said.
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Sharing milk outside a milk bank involves risks
The potential benefits for any form of antibody breast milk now have parents who can or can no longer breastfeed, and look at friends, neighbors and strangers online. Carson, the mother of Intelligencer and GMA, is one of them. She received three offers after inquiring about them in a Facebook app from Brooklyn parents.
But the FDA discourages sharing breast milk that way (as opposed to a milk bank), as it can contain infectious diseases, medicines, environmental contaminants, and drug metabolites. During the evaluation of more than 100 samples of breast milk sold online before the pandemic, scientists found that most had diseases that caused bacteria, some of which resembled sewage.
Shared breast milk can also be handled inappropriately. The “risks certainly outweigh the potential benefits,” said Dr. Jennifer Ashton, chief medical correspondent for ABC News, said about GMA.
Powell told Insider if you are going to seek or share breast milk, it is the safest way to do it with someone you know very well. “Sharing milk can be a wonderful thing, but you have to know the risks and context,” she said. “Just getting it anonymous is probably not the right way.”
Some lactating women give their older children breast milk with COVID-19 antibodies
Some moms with COVID-19 antibody-rich breast milk reconsider its value in their own families.
Powell said she received emails from mothers who are on the milk asking if they should wait longer to wean their children or to pump their antibody-laden milk to grow their older children’s eggs and sippy cups .
‘It needs a pandemic for people to think and realize [that] there has always been a lot of good stuff in your milk, “said Powell, who is currently breastfeeding her 3-year-old self.
There are no risks in giving breast milk to older children, but it is unclear whether it offers much protection against COVID-19, as the children’s diets are more diverse than babies. The amount is therefore the limiting factor, she said, and parents’ peace of mind and time also matter.
“If it’s an easy thing to do and it makes you happy,” Powell said, “there is no harm.” On the other hand, no one should feel pressured to pump or try to lactate their older children. “There is not enough data to say that you absolutely have to do this,” she said. “There’s enough pressure on moms to get started.”