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Transmission of lymphocyte responsiveness to schistosomal antigens by breast feeding

A M Eissa1, M A Saad, A K Abdel Ghaffar

  • 1Department of Paediatrics, School of Medicine, Al-Azhar University, Cairo, Egypt.

Tropical and Geographical Medicine
|July 1, 1989
PubMed

Fifty normal infants were evaluated for the influence of their feeding pattern on the mother-to-child transmission of lymphocyte responsiveness to Schistosoma mansoni antigens. Positive delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions (DTH) were observed in 56% of infants who were breast-fed by infected mothers. Two out of 20 formula-fed infants born to infected mothers had positive DTH. A positive DTH was detected in only one infant out of 15 breast-fed by schistosomiasis-free mothers. These results suggest that cellular hypersensitivity to S. mansoni antigen can - at least in part - be transmitted in the colostrum/milk of infected mothers to their infants.

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