Breast Milk May Help Prevent Food Allergies

Breast Milk May Help Prevent Food Allergies

Could increasing rates of food allergy have been sparked by advice for mums-to-be to avoid certain foods known to be allergenic?

New research suggests that pregnant women might be able to protect their offspring from common food allergies by eating some specific trigger foods such as peanuts and eggs, especially if they go on to breastfeed.

Mice Studies

The study, published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, suggests that minute quantities of foods eaten by the mother can be transferred to her baby in the womb, driving later food tolerance.

So far, the results have only been demonstrated in mice but if shown to be true for humans, could contradict previous advice that mothers should avoid highly allergenic foods, such as peanuts, during pregnancy or while breastfeeding.

Protective Antibodies

Researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital Division of Allergy and Immunology and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the US gave pregnant mice allergy-triggering foods.

They found that these foods transferred protective antibodies to their offspring. The antibodies caused the offspring to produce allergen-specific regulatory T immune cells, which helped them tolerate these specific foods.

This protective effect was even greater when the mice were also exposed through breastfeeding, the researchers say.

In other experiments, female mice who had never consumed allergenic foods were given antibodies specific to those foods from other mice. This also resulted in protection for their offspring.

Will It Work for People?

Human breast milk, fed to mice whose immune systems had been engineered to respond to human antibodies, also led to protection for baby mice, suggesting that the findings might also apply to human babies.

Mice were chosen because, unlike in human studies, it is easier to control when mother and offspring were first exposed to specific foods.

Now, to explore whether the findings apply to humans, the team is starting to collect breast milk to find out what factors make breast milk protective.

They want to compare milk from mothers whose babies are both at high and low-risk of developing a food allergy. This will be determined by whether they have a sibling with a food allergy or other risk factors, such as a history of early eczema.

They say one key question in why the protective mechanism is not functioning in people who have food allergies.

SOURCES:

Maternal IgG immune complexes induce food allergen–specific tolerance in offspring, Ohsaki A et al, Journal of Experimental Medicine

Boston Children’s Hospital

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