Whether you breastfeed or not (because fed is definitely best), there's no denying that breast milk is just cool. It's basically the closest humans can come to producing a magic potion. It changes depending on the baby's needs, it helps fight allergies, beats back disease and promotes immune response. Even those of us who struggled to breastfeed can appreciate its punk-rock powers. In a word, breast milk is metal.
Breast milk is the human body's antibody-carrying magic potion and it is under intense study right now because it could help in the fight against coronavirus.
One reason breast milk is so powerful is that it carries antibodies that help babies fight off disease. Antibodies (for those of us who did not ace high school biology) are an important part of the human body's immune response system. When a virus, bacteria or other threat attacks the body, our blood cells produce antibodies to fight the infection. These antibodies also promote immunity to that virus in the short term.
And antibodies might just be the next battlefront in our returning to normal after the COVID-19 epidemic. Researchers are now working to produce a coronavirus antibody test to help people determine whether they might be protected from further infection. "There may be many people out there, and I suspect there are a fair amount, who have been infected, were asymptomatic, and didn't know it," Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during an interview on Today.
Rebecca Powell, a researcher at New York City's Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, is examining the presence of antibodies in the breast milk of women who have been exposed to coronavirus, as reported by Vice News. While much of the current antibody research is focused on antibodies in human blood, Powell is focused on the antibodies carried by human breast milk, which may have some biological advantages.
Her theory is that breastfeeding women in New York City, the pandemic's current global epicenter, might have developed antibodies in response to the virus, which their breast milk is now passing on to their children. Whether a woman has tested positive for the disease or not, if she's been exposed and is currently healthy, that means her body might have already swung into action creating antibodies. Those antibodies might then be passed into breast milk to help protect her infant against the disease.
Powell is urgently seeking breast milk donations to use in her research, and hundreds of women have answered her call, wanting to help do their part in the scientific fight against coronavirus. "I have hundreds of emails of people who want to participate, and many of them have said they had highly suspected infection or a positive test," Powell told Vice News.
"If we find that there's really potent antibodies in the milk, can those be used therapeutically in a way that Mt. Sinai and other hospitals are now using convalescent plasma—to treat those who are really ill?" Powell asked.
We already know that nursing women produce antibodies for other viruses such as the flu and that those are passed into breast milk for the infant's protection. It's exciting to think that women could be producing powerful antibodies for coronavirus in a similar way.
Is it any surprise that moms make magic? Nah. We're kinda metal like that.
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