BREAST FEEDING AND MATERNAL-DONOR RENAL ALLOGRAFTS

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Abstract
Large numbers of maternal lymphocytes are present in breast milk. To determine whether exposure of an infant to maternal lymphocytes during the process of breast feeding would have an effect on the subsequent reactivity of a patient to a maternal-donor related renal transplant, the posttransplant course of 55 patients who had received a primary maternal-donor transplant was studied. Twenty-seven recipients had been breast-fed during infancy and 28 recipients had not been breast-fed. A history of breast feeding was associated with a more favorable posttransplant course as measured by the percentage of patients who had no rejection episodes during the 1st posttransplant year (P .ltoreq. 0.006). The 1-yr graft function rate for breast-fed recipients was 82%; this was statistically significantly better than the 57% measured for non-breast-fed recipients (P .ltoreq. 0.05). Statistical significance of differences between groups was not attained when results were evaluated over a 5-yr interval. A difference between breast-fed and non-breast-fed recipients was not apparent when a somewhat smaller group of patients who had received a paternal donor transplant was evaluated. From these observations it may be concluded that the process of breast feeding during infancy may result in a measurable immunologic benefit to the recipient of a subsequent maternal-donor related renal transplant.