Great to see more research on this (though it's not new news for a lot of
us), but the last sentence?!  Hoping to get my hands on the actual research
soon.

http://consumer.healthday.com/women-s-health-information-34/breast-feeding-news-82/briefs-emb-8-21-7pmet-breast-milk-good-bacteria-envir-microbiology-release-batch-889-679444.html
 Breast-Feeding May Pass Good Bacteria From Mom to Baby Study found same
beneficial strains in the guts of mother and child, as well as in breast
milk

THURSDAY, Aug. 22 (HealthDay News) -- Breast milk delivers beneficial
bacteria from a mother's gut to her baby's digestive system, according to a
new study.

Swiss researchers found the same strains of several types of beneficial
bacteria in breast milk and in mothers' and babies' feces. Strains found in
breast milk may help establish a critical nutritional balance in the baby's
gut and may be important to prevent intestinal disorders, according to the
authors of the study in the Aug. 22 issue of the journal *Environmental
Microbiology*.

"We are excited to find out that bacteria can actually travel from the
mother's gut to her breast milk," Christophe Lacroix, of the Institute for
Food, Nutrition and Health in Zurich, said in a journal news release. "A
healthy community of bacteria in the gut of both mother and baby is really
important for baby's gut health and immune system development," he
explained.

"We're not sure of the route the bacteria take from gut to breast milk but,
we have used culture, isolation, sequencing and fingerprinting methods to
confirm that they are definitely the same strains," Lacroix added.

Further research is needed to determine how beneficial bacteria are
transferred through breast milk from mother to infant. Having a greater
understanding of how babies acquire a population of beneficial bacteria in
their digestive system may lead to the development of formula milk that is
more like breast milk, the researchers said.

*More information*

The U.S. Office on Women's Health has more about
breast-feeding<http://womenshealth.gov/breastfeeding/>
.

-- Robert Preidt<http://www.healthday.com/healthday-editors-reporters.html#13>

SOURCE: *Environmental Microbiology*, news release, Aug. 21, 2013

Last Updated: Aug. 22, 2013

Copyright © 2013 HealthDay <http://www.healthday.com/>. All rights reserved.



Kara Kaikini, MS, IBCLC

Maine, USA

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