Breast Milk Tested As Cure
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday August 29, 1994
An Adelaide study testing breast milk as a treatment for sticky eye, a common problem in newborn babies, has produced encouraging early results, according to its authors.
Ms Valerie Aylesbury and Ms Shirley Slater, midwives at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, undertook the study to see if there was a scientific basis for a practice common among some South American, African and other ethnic communities.
Ms Aylesbury, who presented the findings yesterday at the Australian Lactation Consultants' Association conference in Adelaide, said initial results suggested breast milk was more effective than the conventional treatment of rinsing with sterile water.
Sticky eye occurs when babies' tear ducts become blocked, leading to an accumulation of eye fluids and tears, with associated infections. It affects about 5 per cent of young babies.
Ms Aylesbury said breast milk contained antibacterial agents which were also present in human tears to protect the cornea from infection.
But Dr Frank Martin, the head of ophthalmology at the Children's Hospital at Camperdown, said there was no scientific basis to support the use of breast milk as a treatment for sticky eye, and that about 80 per cent of sticky eye problems cleared up spontaneously without treatment.
"It wouldn't do any harm but there's no basis to it," Dr Martin said.
Ms Joy Heads, a lactation consultant at the Royal Hospital for Women in Sydney, said some doctors regarded the breast milk treatment as unclean and unscientific.
Because of this, many women were reluctant to acknowledge that they used it.
The practice was not encouraged at her hospital, although it had the potential to cut costs and prevent the unnecessary use of antibiotics, which were sometimes used to treat infections associated with sticky eye.
The ongoing study is testing three treatments for cleaning the eye in babies up to the age of three weeks: a swab soaked in sterile water; a swab soaked with breast milk; and cleaning the eye first with a dry swab and then squirting it with milk straight from the breast.
The two breast milk treatments were both quicker at clearing up the sticky eye, Ms Aylesbury said.
She hoped the study would encourage greater awareness of the benefits of breast milk, and wider use of a simple, cheap treatment for a condition which made many patients anxious.
© 1994 Sydney Morning Herald