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Transmission of Staphylococcus aureus between healthy, lactating mothers and their infants by breastfeeding

Midori Kawada1, Katsuko Okuzumi, Shigemi Hitomi

  • 1Department of Family Nursing, Graduate school of Health Sciences and Nursing Faculty of Medicine, University of Tokyo, Japan.

Journal of Human Lactation : Official Journal of International Lactation Consultant Association
|November 19, 2003
PubMed

The authors have investigated Staphylococcus aureus transmission between healthy, lactating mothers without mastitis and their infants by breastfeeding using both bacteriological and molecular-epidemiological methods. They studied 8 healthy, lactating mothers without clinical signs of mastitis and their infants who were less than 3 months old. They collected samples of breast milk, swabs of the mothers' nipples, the infants' nares, and the infants' oral cavities. There was a 50% transmission rate between the pairs. As the result of 12 antibiotics' susceptibility, Methicillin-resistant S. aureus was isolated from 2 of the 4 pairs. Using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, the authors determined chromosomal DNA restriction patterns of the S. aureus isolated from 4 mother-infant pairs. The DNA fragment patterns of the organism within a given mother-infant pair were indistinguishable or closely related. The results suggest that methicillin-resistant S. aureus or methicillin-sensitive S. aureus may be transmitted between healthy, lactating mothers without mastitis and their infants by breastfeeding.

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