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Breast milk from healthy women has higher anti-Candida properties than women with vaginal infections during pregnancy

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Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate the different immunological and antimicrobial properties of breast milk from women with (W) or without (WO) vaginal yeast infections during pregnancy in 85 lactating women (W, n = 43; WO, n = 42). Concentrations of IL-10, IgA, IgM, IgG, EGF, and TGF-α were similar in both groups. However, breast milk of women aged below 31 years old from the W-group showed higher concentration of EGF than the WO-group (p = 0.031). Breast milk from WO-group exhibited higher anti-Candida properties than W-group, both via growth inhibition and aggregation of yeast cells (p < 0.001). Correlation analysis showed that breast milk concentration of TGF-α positively correlated with concentrations of IL-10 (p = 0.001) and IgA (p = 0.021) in the W-group. Data from our present study shows that although breast milk from women with vaginal infections during pregnancy may not sufficiently hinder Candida growth, other immuno-modulatory bioactives may substitute for such a protective effect.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Probionic Corp., South Korea for providing the USM-Probionic Grant for this project.

Funding

This work is supported by USM-Probionic Grant (Grant Number 304/PTEKIND/6501096) and USM-Industry Research Matching Grant (Grant Number 1001/PTEKIND/8070012).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Industrial Technology, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia

    Azka Ainun Nisaa & Min-Tze Liong

  2. Institute for Research in Molecular Medicine (INFORMM), Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800, Penang, Malaysia

    Chern-Ein Oon, Sasidharan Sreenivasan & Venugopal Balakrishnan

  3. Advanced Medical and Dental Institute, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 13200, Penang, Malaysia

    Jun Jie Tan & Salina Sany

  4. Department of Medical Microbiology, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Malaya, 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Cindy Shuan-Ju Teh

  5. ProBacLab, Department of Advanced Convergence, Handong Global University, Pohang, Gyeongbuk, 37554, Republic of Korea

    Svetoslav Dimitrov Todorov

  6. Institute of Microbiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, People’s Republic of China

    Guoxia Liu

  7. Jeonbuk Institute for Food-Bioindustry, Probionic Corporation, 111-18, Wonjangdong-gil, Deokjin-gu, Jeonju-si, 54810, Jeollabuk-do, South Korea

    Yong-Ha Park

Authors
  1. Azka Ainun Nisaa
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  11. Min-Tze Liong
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Contributions

Methodology and analyses: AAN, GL, CEO, MTL; Investigation and center management: SS, VB, JJT, CSJT; Consultation and sampling: AAN, SS, MTL; Funding: YHP; Data curation and writing: SDT, MTL.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Chern-Ein Oon, Yong-Ha Park or Min-Tze Liong.

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Conflict of interest

All authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results.

Institutional review board

All procedures involving human subjects were approved by the JEPeM-USM Review Panel on Clinical Studies (Approval number USM/JEPeM/20090500) and was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (identifier number NCT05005286).

Informed consent

Written informed consent was obtained from all subjects prior to the start of the study.

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Nisaa, A.A., Oon, CE., Sreenivasan, S. et al. Breast milk from healthy women has higher anti-Candida properties than women with vaginal infections during pregnancy. Food Sci Biotechnol 32, 471–480 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10068-022-01088-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10068-022-01088-x

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