>Hi, all! We seem to be dancing around this topic and not
>answering a question I posed some time ago. Debbie M-H (Missouri)
>came very close on July 26  with a quote from the Missouri Bureau
>of Communicable Disease Control Policy and Procedure Manual that
>"botulism is categorized either as foodborne, *wound*, infant and
>unclassified", but she didn't develop the "wound" category.
>
>Let me pose it this way: Is it possible for a lactating woman to
>apply honey to bleeding nipples (or C/s incision as mentioned
>previous), become infected with *blood-borne* botulism and then
>pass the botulism on to the breastfeeding infant via her
>*breastmilk* (*not* directly to infant via honey per ora).
>Or is there some protective mechanism inherent in BM to protect
>against this?

A couple of thoughts--I don't know anything about blood-borne botulism, but
if there were enough C. botulinum spores in the honey to cause this (I
assume a relatively high spore load would be necessary before occurrence
would be likely), then what is the risk to the baby of developing
intestinal-grown botulism from ingesting this same honey from the nipple
surface or the wound?  Wouldn't it be the same or greater?

Second thought:  since C. botulinum toxin is so very toxic, would the
mother be likely to be well enough to breastfeed while suffering from
botulism?  Wouldn't the interval between time of infection (not exposure to
spores but infection by C. botulinum toxin) and onset of illness be so
brief as to make breastfeeding while toxic a slim possibility?  Say she
were to breastfeed at the very onset of the illness, before problems etc.
set in--wouldn't the chances of the toxin having had time to infect her
milk at that point be slim?

A last thought:  would the neurologic effects of the C. botulinum toxin
allow breastfeeding or hamper it physiologically, interfering at some level
from the hypothalamus to the pituitary to the myoepithelial cells?

I used to live in an area where C. botulinum spores were, my professors
assured me, "ubiquitous," yet it is not the spores which cause illness but
the toxin the bacteria produces if the conditions are right for growth.
And the toxin is deadly in very small amounts.

Arly Helm

[log in to unmask] (Arly Helm, LC)