According to one study, breast milk gives a big boost to a baby’s immune system

The announcement highlighted that the trademark issued by MAGYOSZ can currently be placed on the products of 11 companies.
The Hungarian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers created the Hungarian Medicines Trademark in 2014, with the aim of informing doctors, pharmacists and patients from authentic sources about medicines manufactured or researched and developed in Hungary, he recalled.

The association drew attention to the fact that domestic pharmaceutical manufacturers spend an average of HUF 70-80 billion annually on research and development. 82 percent of the products of domestic manufacturers are sold in more than a hundred countries of the world, and the sales revenue from exports is close to HUF 900 billion.

The Hungarian pharmaceutical industry offers therapy for many diseases, but mainly for health complaints that affect Hungarian society the most: cardiovascular diseases, treatment of metabolic disorders and nervous system diseases - they described.

This further increases the number of beneficial health effects of breast milk, some of which can accompany a person even into adulthood. Although it has been speculated so far that breast milk affects infants' immune defenses, so far they have known almost nothing about its mechanism.

The research has now revealed that in the first weeks, almost twice as many regulatory T cells are formed in infants when they receive breast milk as if they were fed exclusively formula, the MTA said in a statement on Thursday.

These immune cells play a role in regulating the immune response. For example, they alleviate the immune response to breast cells derived from breast milk and also reduce inflammation. It has also been found that some beneficial gut bacteria that help regulate T cells also occur in greater numbers in the gut of breastfed babies.

A study on this has been published in the journal Allergy.
"We studied babies who were born on time from uncomplicated pregnancy by cesarean section. The latter was important because natural birth triggers an inflammatory response from the immune system, and this would have disrupted the evaluation of the results," quotes Gergely Toldi of the report. He is also a member of the Academy of Researchers.

The researchers took blood and stool samples from the babies immediately after they were born and then repeated this at the age of three weeks. It looked at how T lymphocytes (immune cells) change in the first few weeks, and how the baby’s immune cells respond to maternal cells.

During pregnancy, maternal cells enter the fetus through the placenta, and after birth, the cell from the mother enters the child's bloodstream through the intestinal tract through breast milk.

According to the researcher, it has not been known at all what this means immunologically, what reactions it causes. As research on intestinal microbiomes has developed very dynamically in recent decades, the composition of intestinal bacteria has also been studied in breast-fed babies and their formula-fed counterparts, they write.

"Our results show that there is a significant change in acquired immunity in the first three weeks. There has been no human data for this because it is difficult to take blood samples from healthy newborns for research purposes. Our knowledge is therefore mainly from animal experiments," the neonatologist explained.

The difference in the amount of regulatory T cells is markedly significant between breastfed and breastfed babies. By the end of the third week, there will be almost twice as many regulatory T cells in the breast-fed group. This is the cell type that regulates the entire immune response. It plays a role in inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, but also in infections. The immune response must not only be initiated but also stopped, and this is a function of regulatory T cells.

The mother's cells contain antigens that are foreign to the newborn's immune system, so in the absence of regulation, she would act against them with full force. That is, multiple regulatory T cells allow for better tolerance of maternal cells. In this study, the number of cells involved in the immune system was measured.

As they write, these results do not directly provide information on whether the differences experienced have an effect on the health status of babies, their diseases, or the subsequent functioning of their immune systems. Researchers plan to monitor the development of these children in the long run. It was decided in the present case to take a second blood sample from infants at a very young age, three weeks, because they do not receive compulsory vaccinations in England at that time (BCG is not compulsory there either), so there are few external conditions that could affect their immune system in breast milk. outside.

However, other epidemiological studies indicate that a characteristic change in regulatory T cells is seen in allergy sufferers, autoimmune patients, and those with infection.

It is also not known whether the multiple regulatory T cells experienced at three weeks of age indicate a lasting difference or whether their numbers level off in a short time between breastfed and breastfed babies. The researcher perceives that it is likely to level off to some extent later in life, but early events may nevertheless remain important for long-term immune development.

"Based on the scientific data, we can say that breast milk is more beneficial for the newborn in all respects. However, it is not uncommon for the mother to have little or no milk, so I do not think that formula has any place in feeding newborns, especially special , for infant formulas "- argues Gergely Toldi.

"The composition of breast milk is so complex that even today we do not fully understand the function of all its ingredients. Thus, formula companies will never be able to copy the composition of breast milk one by one. Breast milk contains many cells, the mother's own cells, but harmless organisms such as bacteria. According to the announcement, Dávid Greskovits, President of MAGYOSZ, said that GPs and pharmacists working in pharmacies know and recognize Hungarian-branded medicines. and encouraged everyone to turn to these professionals with confidence.

(Source: marmalade.co.hu; MTI | Image: pixabay.com)