Mmunologic Consequences Of Feeding Infants With Cow’s Milk

Various products and regimens have been proposed extensively over the world for feeding infants when the mother’s milk is not available.

These products have been evaluated intensively for capacity to achieve optimal nutrition.

So far the immunologic consequences of feeding the foreign proteins contained in the various products have received much less attention and no systematic investigations have been done for comparable immunologic evaluation. However sera obtained at intervals from normal infants fed cow milk from birth in different regimens were analyzed for antibodies to five major milk proteins isolate.

RESULTS

Surprisingly Antibody levels increased slowly during the first 4 months, reaching a peak about 6 months of age. In infants fed cow milk products from birth to 112 days of age and then given various cow milk products the following antibody responses were observed:

The level of serum antibodies attained was highest with pasteurized cow milk and lower with heat-treated cow milk or a milk base formula of lower protein content.

Clinically no immunologic disorders were detected in association with antibody responses to the various products and regimens.

What more the antibody levels in ifants fed with Cow’s milk were found to be higher as compared to the antibody levels in infants fed with other protein sources other than cow’s milk.