Sensitisation through breast milk?

The benefit of breast feeding to prevent or delay the development of food allergy in infants is somewhat controversial. Although prolonged breast feeding has widely been recommended for infants at high risk of allergy, studies concerning the composition of human milk in atopic mothers are scarce. Human breast milk is not a stabile concept. We have previously found that the cellular composition of human milk is significantly different in mothers with a food allergic infant than in those with a healthy child. The number of monocytes, lymphocytes or eosinophils, was greatly elevated whereas the number of activated macrophages was decreased in the breast milk of mothers with a severely allergic infant. The high numbers of eosinophils could easily increase the permeability of the gut thereby increasing the absorption of dietary antigens, and thus enhance the development of food allergies. Breast feeding provide many advantages to the suckling infant. However, infants developing food allergic symptoms on exclusive breast feeding may benefit from changing to formula feeding to protect adequate growth and to prevent the development of a more severe allergic symptomatology.