One of the key benefits of breastmilk over formula current is the immune benefits being passed from mother to child. Why is it not possible to artificially create antibodies etc and add it to formula? Formula already has the other nutritional benefits. And babies who take donated breastmilk are fine, so the immune benefits exist even if it’s not from the baby’s own mother.
In: Chemistry
Cost aside, “antibodies” are not a single discrete chemical entity. Skipping a better explanation that would trigger someone on this sub to rage about it not being amenable to actual 5 year olds, basically every antibody you have was randomly generated and happened to match a part of an foreign bacteria/virus/etc. There are additionally many subtypes of antibodies specialized for dealing with specific types of pathogens/etc in specific areas or pathogens in particular areas of the body. The antibodies in any breast milk are a hugely diverse array of different molecules recognizing most significant pathogens the mother’s immune system has encountered, as well as many natural commensal organisms (which they may actually help establish in the microbiome).
In short, it’s technically infeasible at present to identify likely thousands of different antibody clones in breast milk and work out a minimal “standard” that could be produced en masse even if there existed unlimited resources. What could work is pooling antibodies from blood donations. This is safe and common. The reason this isn’t in breast milk as it’s a limited resource given intravenously for the treatment of numerous serious immunological disorders (intravenous immunoglobulin therapy).
Also, this isn’t the only thing “missing” from formula. There are a ton of biologically active components of breast milk that definitely aren’t fully understood.
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