Cytokines in Breast Milk from Allergic and Nonallergic Mothers

Sorry, there is no abstract. Read the first few lines of the text instead!The allergy–preventing effect of breast–feeding is controversial [1, 2]. This may be due to individual variations of the composition of human milk. Allergy is associated with a bias to production of cytokines involved in IgE synthesis, e.g. IL–4 and IL–13 [3] and the eosinophil chemotactic [4] and survival [5] factor IL–5. In contrast, IFN–=γ, which inhibits IgE synthesis [6], is downregulated [7]. Cytokines involved in IgA production, IL–6, IL–10 and TGF–β [8, 9] have also been proposed to be involved in IgE synthesis [10, 11, 12].