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Breast milk advertised online contains cow’s milk, puts infants with allergy at risk
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Parents who purchase human milk via the Internet should be mindful that their purchase may not be 100% human milk, as study data has confirmed the presence of cow’s milk in what was advertised as human milk.
“Although the FDA recommends against feeding infants human milk from unscreened donors, sharing unpasteurized human milk among women with excess breast milk and those who want to feed breast milk but are unable to do so is growing in popularity,” study researcher Sarah A. Keim, PhD, MA, MS, of The Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital, and colleagues wrote. “Altruistic donation and selling milk via the Internet has become popular, with an estimated 13,000 postings or advertisements annually on popular U.S. websites.”
Researchers anonymously purchased 102 samples advertised as human milk online and extracted DNA from 200 μL of each sample. Species-specific real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay was used to identify the presence of human or bovine mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA).
Twelve samples tested positive for bovine mtDNA. Researchers diluted those samples and eight other bovine DNA-negative samples 1:10 and tested for bovine mtDNA for a second time via PCR for further confirmation. Eleven of the 12 samples originally tested positive for bovine mtDNA tested positive again.
Ten samples had high enough concentrations of bovine mtDNA to rule out minor, accidental contamination, according to researchers, suggesting that some sellers intentionally added cow’s milk.
“We considered whether the maternal diet could be the source of bovine DNA in Internet samples. Because of the multiple epithelial cell barriers between the gut and human milk expression, it is highly unlikely that ingested bovine DNA could traffic to the breast and be expressed in significant amounts,” Keim and colleagues wrote.
“Cow’s milk can be problematic if ingested by an infant with cow’s milk protein allergy or intolerance. Pediatricians who care for infants should be aware that milk advertised as human is available via the Internet, and some of it may not be 100% human milk,” they concluded. – by Amanda Oldt
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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