XL04: The Role of Breastfeeding for the Protection of the Infant

Lecturer: Prof Lars Hanson
L-CERPs: 1.25
Cost: US$18.75
Access period: one week
Lecture recorded: at GOLD08
Synopsis: The circumstances of birth are designed to stimulate the start of the newborn's immune responses. Breastmilk specificity continues to provide protection and development of the infant's immunity.
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Lecture Details: The newborn meets a lot of microbes from delivery on and has initially a very small immune system, which starts to expand as a result of this microbial exposure. While this takes place the infant is normally protected via the mother’s milk which contains a large number of defence factors with the secretory IgA (SIgA) antibodies being a major one. These milk SIgA antibodies are directed against all the microbes the mother carries in her gut, on her hands etc; thus the microbes to which the infant primarily gets colonized with in early life. This is one major explanation why breastfeeding can protect the infant so well: the mother-infant dyad forms a stable ecologic niche (unless it is disturbed by for instance section delivery). The milk-mediated protection lasts all through the course of breastfeeding, but some enhancing effects, like promotion of the infant's response to certain vaccines, seem to last for some years thereafter.

About the Lecturer: Lars Hanson was born in 1934. He studied medicine at Gothenburg University, Sweden; became MD 1961; wrote in parallel a PhD thesis, published in 1961: in that work Lars discovered in human milk the SIgA and isolated it for the first time. Secretory IgA (SIgA) is the major antibody in milk and also present in all our exocrine secretions. Thus it is present on all our mucosal membranes, like in the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts and makes up some 70% of all our antibodies. He became a specialist in pediatrics and later in clinical immunology, as well as Professor and Chairman of the Dept of Clinical Immunology at the University of Gothenburg. Much of his work has concerned the defence against infections in children in developing, as well as developed countries; and most specifically the role and mode of function of breastfeeding in supporting the defence of the infant. Lars has worked in Costa Rica, Guatemala and especially Pakistan, also having had students from these countries, as well as many others. In his research group some 80 students have received PhDs.