5-19 IAN Mastitis Research

 A TOP REASON WOMEN STOP BREASTFEEDING is mastitis, a bacterial infection that makes breastfeeding painful. Often nursing mothers get mastitis only in one breast. Working with Palouse area lactation experts, UI professor Mark McGuire is comparing milk from the healthy breast with that from the infected one of some 20 area women in hopes of identifying disruptive pathogens.  

 “One study in Spain found giving lactobacilli—healthy lactic acid bacteria—to mothers cured mastitis in breastfeeding women quicker than did antibiotics,” said McGuire. But this is an ag broadcast. What does this have to do with ag? A professor of animal and veterinary science who also seeks a cure for mastitis in dairy cows, McGuire believes cures for both cow and human mastitis are a year or two away. “What we’d like to do is see what the Spanish group does to see if it prevents mastitis in women and if it does it would give us more confidence in going forward to do some cow work to see whether or not whether you feed it or apply it to the teats which might inoculate the mamory gland to protect the milk.” McGuire praises the UI’s equipment and faculty expertise, which he describes as “robust enough to study any topic involving microbiomes—such as lactation systems.”