Abstract
The authors have investigated Staphylococcus aureus transmission between healthy, lactating mothers without mastitis and their infants by breastfeeding using both bacteriological and molecular-epidemiological methods. They studied 8 healthy, lactating mothers without clinical signs of mastitis and their infants who were less than 3 months old. They collected samples of breast milk, swabs of the mothers' nipples, the infants' nares, and the infants' oral cavities. There was a 50%transmission rate between the pairs. As the result of 12 antibiotics' susceptibility, Methicillin-resistant S. aureus was isolated from 2 of the 4 pairs. Using pulsed-field gel electrophoresis, the authors determined chromosomal DNA restriction patterns of the S.aureus isolated from 4 mother-infant pairs. The DNA fragment patterns of the organism within a given mother-infant pair were indistinguishable or closely related. The results suggest that methicillin-resistant S. aureus or methicillin-sensitive S. aureus may be transmitted between healthy, lactating mothers without mastitis and their infants by breastfeeding. J Hum Lact. 19(4):411-417.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.