We know that there are short- and long-term benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and infants. But robust clinical lactation studies are rare, and the existing data cannot be confidently translated into evidence-based clinical practice. To provide evidence for how a medicine transfers to breastmilk, we need to test milk from mothers who use medicines during the post-partum period. ConcePTION is developing a research infrastructure to collect, store and analyse samples of breast milk and blood. This infrastructure is compliant with regulatory quality and ISO standards, and will be a platform for lactation studies for both universities and pharmaceutical companies. Helping to bridge the knowledge gap for women who want to breastfeed.
Four demonstration projects will be conducted to study milk transfer of Amoxicillin, Metformin, Venlafaxine and Levocetirizine/cetirizine. The studies will be carried out by different partners in the project. They will flesh out the strength and feasibility of different methodological approaches to inform our stakeholders about best practices. The clinical site in Oslo has already started with the recruitment of the donors and the other three project partners in Toulouse, Lausanne and Uppsala are about to start. And with that, a big step forward in building the European self-sustaining breast milk and blood collection has been taken!
The development of our European Breast Milk collection is supported by the European research infrastructure for biobanking: BBMRI-ERIC. They recently interviewed Hedvig Nordeng and Basma Kousa, from the University of Oslo about the ongoing clinical study in Norway collecting breast milk samples. In the interview, they describe the ethical and logistical challenges, recruitment strategies and expected results, how biobanking breast milk works and how BBMRI-ERIC is contributing to the development of ConcePTION’s European Breast Milk collection.
Watch the interview on YouTube.
This text builds on a text originally published by BBMRI-ERIC.