14 Aug, 2024
First week of August is marked as breastfeeding week. Every year it is celebrated worldwide to promote breastfeeding in mothers. This year the theme for breastfeeding given by World Health Organization (WHO) is “Closing the gap: Breastfeeding support for all”.1 The aim behind this campaign is to recognize breastfeeding mothers, ensure that every mother is heard and supported well and to create awareness and share experiences of their journey regarding breastfeeding.
Breastfeeding is beneficial for the baby and mother but in many countries, it becomes a task for mother to breastfeed baby in public due to exposure and discomfort which leads to them either isolating themselves at home or shifting the baby to bottle feeding. Therefore, support to mothers to be able to breastfeed anytime, anywhere is essential and should not be chastised in public life. Nowadays the mothers are working too with managing household and nurturing their children in all it looks well but it takes a toll on mother’s health. With managing work and motherhood breastfeeding is safer and easier option for them with right kind of support and awareness.
Recently an article has been published by researchers of Yale team regarding the effect of parental milk and human donor milk versus formula milk on intestinal growth.2 It was seen that breastmilk supports health and epithelial growth and differentiation while formula milk inhibits the growth factors and prevents differentiation. It was also found that breastmilk enhances growth and improvement of certain cell types like the enteroendocrine cells that helps proper digestion and peristalsis.
Liza Konnikova the corresponding author of this study commented that there is ambiguity whether there are good factors in breast milk and detrimental factors in formula or its mixture of both that causes this effect on intestinal growth, but it was definite that formula can be harmful to epithelial growth directly. It was established that nutritional exposure had great effect on the development of the fetal intestinal epithelium. The fetal intestinal tissue when exposed to formula milk it had more inflammatory immune activity in comparison to the breastmilk and the babies that were breastfed had better growth, quicker differentiation into mature cell types and more homeostatic immunophenotype. These could be the probable reasons why we see more gastrointestinal complications of prematurity such as necrotizing enterocolitis with formula fed babies versus breastfed babies.
In future if research is able to identify the factors in breastmilk that are protective and enhances intestinal growth and reduces gastrointestinal complications, the formula milk can be supplemented with these factors reducing morbidity and mortality. Also, this would then make feeding easier for mothers as they will be able to choose between formula and breastfeeding without any guilt, doubt or societal pressure.
References:
- https: //www.who.int/campaigns/world-breastfeeding-week/2024.
- Lauren Smith et al, Human milk supports robust intestinal organoid growth, differentiation, and homeostatic cytokine production, Gastro Hep Advances (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.gastha.2024.07.007