At 01:56 PM 8/25/04, you wrote:
>Has this mother and baby been cultured to be sure it's actually thrush
>they're experiencing?  Yeast gets blamed for much of the breast/nipple pain,
>especially when mom feels a burning pain.  It could be bacterial, or some
>other kind
>of skin problem.  After mom's been treated with nystatin, g. violet, Diflucan
>etc. I'm thinking it is unlikely to be thrush.  I'd strongly encourage
>culturing to determine exactly what is causing this pain.  Susan Manore, IBCLC
>
>              ***********************************************
There was an excellent session at the ILCA conference on the failure of
culturing yeast in human milk. We have all experienced a testing of yeast
by culture and it fails even though symptoms point to yeast.

The speaker, Jemi Francis-Morrill worked long and hard to get yeast in
human milk to culture and she discovered that yeast needs iron to thrive
and that the lactoferrin in our milk interferes with that thriving. So she
added iron to the culture and was able to get a positive test for yeast.

But most labs do not know about this aspect of yeast growth and mothers who
surely have yeast will test negative.

If you have a chance to hear the tape from the conference of this
presentation it will be worth your effort.

There can certainly be a combination of yeast and bacteria presence in
nipple pain, which is one reason that I like to use Jack Newman's All
Purpose Nipple Ointment. The bactroban ingredient is both antifungal and
antibacterial.

It is possible for a breastfeeding mother and baby to have persistent yeast
and it needs to be resolved.
A history of recurrent vaginal yeast infections is often a risk for
persistent nipple/breast/oral yeast.

Patricia Gima, IBCLC
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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