Sao Paulo: In a rare case, Brazilian scientists used breast milk to treat Covid-19 in a patient with a rare genetic disease that makes his immune formula unable to fight viruses and other pathogens.
The patient who was diagnosed with Covid-19, in March 2021, tested positive for 124 days via RT-PCR. The team from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo asked her to drink 30 milliliters of breast milk every 3 hours. for a week. Breast milk given through a woman who had been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2.
Breast milk advanced her point of immunity and helped her become negative within a week, according to the case reported in an article published in the journal Virus.
“I’ve been this patient since I was a child, and I was very worried when she told me she had Covid-19. The inborn immune error you suffer from deregulates your entire defense system. Their inflammatory reaction is defective, with few cells going to the site of inflammation and low antibody production. Depending on their virulence, infectious agents can lead to two outcomes in those cases: chronic infection or death,” said pediatrician Maria Marluce dos Santos Vilela, a professor at UNICAMP’s Faculty of Medicine.
Vilela explained that the immune formula in humans and other mammals produces five types of immunoglobulin antibodies (IgM, IgG, IgA, IgE and IgD).
Patients with immune dysregulation syndromes have an IgE deficiency and, in some cases, a total absence of IgA, the main antibody that neutralizes viruses and other pathogens. IgA is provided in breast milk, as well as in respiratory and gastrointestinal secretions.
The syndromes also result in a very low production of IgG, the most abundant antiframe in the blood and culprit of the popularity and neutralization of antigens with which the frame has been in contact previously.
Only 157 cases equal to those of this patient have been described worldwide, as reported in an article published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.
Vilela said the patient was intentionally treated at home to avoid a hospital-related bacterial infection, which would have worsened her condition.
During the first 15 days of infection, the patient developed fever, loss of appetite, cough and asthenia (lack of energy, weakness), but to Vilela’s amazement and relief, her lungs and other systems were not affected. After two months, her condition was the same and researchers to treat her with convalescent plasma.
Treatment consists of a transfusion of IgG and other antibodies produced by other people who have recovered from Covid.
While her symptoms improved, with relief in inflammatory markers in the blood, after the procedure, her RT-PCR remained positive even after 15 days. The patient still had mild symptoms, as well as symptoms of adinamia, a general muscle weakness related to infections processes.
That’s when the team made the decision to make an experimental remedy that used breast milk to increase their IgA levels. The experiment was based on an article showing that nursing women immunized with Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine produced milk with a moderate amount of IgA.
“We asked him to take the milk orally and keep it in his mouth for several minutes. IgA works like a broom in the sense that it attaches to pathogens from the gastrointestinal tract, so everything else is eliminated with feces. We made a decision about a three-hour period between doses, unless it’s at night, so as not to give the possibility of the virus replicating,” Vilela said.