Colleagues,

We have updated our special repository on Breastfeeding, Infant Feeding, Breast Milk and COVID-19. Since our last update Friday 23 October 2020, we have added 28 NEW publications.

Click here for the latest UPDATE

All publications provide emerging evidence related to COVID-19 and

·  Breastfeeding and breast milk

·  Infant feeding recommendations

·  Feeding difficulties in newborns

Six articles reported the results of breast milk samples tested for SARS-CoV-2, including two systematic reviews (Neef et al., 2020)(Han et al., 2020), and found all to be negative. Furman and Noble (2020) note that while Holder pasteurization successfully inactivates SARS-CoV-2, it also reduces protective antibodies in human milk; therefore, they recommend infected mothers should continue directly breastfeeding their infants.

Four articles specifically promote breastfeeding of newborns when the mother has COVID-19, emphasizing the loss of protective health benefits to newborns when breastfeeding is interrupted (Vogel et al., 2020)(Demirci, 2020)(Bhandari et al., 2020)(Bhutta et al., 2020). Another article provides specific guidelines for breastfeeding mothers with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 (Sullivan et al., 2020).

Giampreti et al. (2020) evaluated the safety of medications used to treat COVID-19 among pregnant and lactating women. Fox et al. (2020) analyzed breast milk samples from 15 donors previously infected with SARS-CoV-2, observing a robust immune response to SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins. The authors suggest these findings warrant further investigation of the therapeutic use of extracted milk antibodies, as well as possible protective effects for breastfed infants.

The next update for this specific repository will be on Friday 20 November, 2020. If you know anyone who would benefit from these updates, please let me know. Or if you want to automatically receive the updates via email, just write me.

Happy reading!

Mija-tesse VERVERS
mververs@cdc.gov and mververs@jhu.edu