Breast milk
contains antibodies that can help neutralize the HIV virus that causes AIDS,
researchers at Duke University Medical Center said Wednesday.
The
discovery may have implications for the development of an HIV vaccine.
The study,
which was published last week in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS
One, studied immune cells in the breast milk of mothers in Malawi who are
infected with HIV. The cells, called "B-cells," generate neutralizing
antibodies that can inhibit the HIV virus.
HIV can be
spread from mother to child through breast milk, yet such a transmission is
only known to happen to one in 10 nursing mothers.
"That
is remarkable because nursing children are exposed multiple times each day
during the first year of life," said senior study author Sallie Permar,
who is an assistant professor of pediatrics and infectious diseases at Duke.
The
discovery that breast milk might help neutralize the virus is significant,
researchers say, because it means that getting more B-cells to produce helpful
antibodies could lead to the development of an HIV vaccine.
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