study
Breast milk: Mothers with Covid-19 can breastfeed without hesitation
A mother breastfeeds her four-month-old son. (Archive image) Photo: Monika Skolimowska/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
All-clear for breastfeeding mothers: Even with a corona infection, their babies can be breastfed without hesitation. There is no evidence that the virus could be passed on.
With the increasing number of omicron infections, the concern of many breastfeeding mothers is also growing: In the event of infection, could they pass the corona virus on to their baby with their breast milk?
A US study seems to give the all-clear again: There is no evidence that recently infected mothers transmit contagious viruses to their children through breastfeeding, the doctors report in the specialist journal “Pediatric Research”. Although the study is very small, it confirms the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the German National Breastfeeding Commission. However, infected mothers should take some precautions when breastfeeding.
Specifically, a team led by pediatrician Paul Krogstad from the US University of California examined breast milk samples from 110 breastfeeding women, which they had donated to the university’s “Mommy’s Milk Human Milk Biorepository” project between March and September 2020. Of these women, 65 had a positive PCR test, nine had symptoms despite negative tests, and 36 were symptomatic but not tested.
No infectious genetic material
When analyzing the samples, the doctors found genetic material from Sars-CoV-2 in the breast milk of seven women (six percent) who either tested positive or indicated that they were symptomatic. However, they could not find any infectious Sars-CoV-2 genetic material, so-called subgenomic RNA (SgRNA). This snRNA is an indicator of whether the virus is actively replicating. Likewise, there were no clinical signs of corona infection in any of the infants from these seven mothers. However, the authors themselves point out that the sample size in their study is small and may not have captured all potential factors that would predict the presence of Sars-CoV-2 RNA in breast milk.
Based on the findings so far, both the World Health Organization (WHO) and the German National Breastfeeding Commission (NSK) at the Max Rubner Institute advise mothers to continue breastfeeding during a corona infection, but to observe a few precautionary measures.