Are there paternal components in human milk?

Abstract

Breastfeeding is indeed the foundation for life and gives growing children a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to grow and develop to their full potential. There are considerable studies on the role of maternal contribution to human milk components. It would be very important and interesting to explore the existence of a paternal contribution into the composition of human milk. Proceeding on this track, there is an abundant evidence that supports the hypothesis of paternal contribution in human milk composition. This evidence could be strengthened by the fact that a small population of the fetal cells migrate during pregnancy and stay for long time in the maternal body. This phenomenon is known as microchimerism. It has been well documented that some of these cells are of mature immunological and hematopoietic stem cells character. As the fetal parts contain 50% from each parent, any fetal parts in the maternal body (i.e., fetal microchimerism) should contain paternal components as well. The paternal genetic material is more responsible for the determination of the fetal sex (female XX or male XY). The variations in maternal human milk component that was clearly understood as related to child sex will substantially provide a solid basis for the investigation of the new hypothesis. In this short report, we conclude by briefly foregrounding the proposed role for paternal contribution on human milk composition for consideration and suggesting new directions for future research that would shed light on this subject.

Keywords: Breast milk; Human milk; Maternal components; Paternal components.