Effect of Pasteurisation Techniques on Phages in Human Milk †
1
School of Molecular Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 2009, Australia
2
Division of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Medical School, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA 2009, Australia
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
†
Presented at the More Than Just Milk Lactation Science Symposium, Perth, Australia, 25 November 2022.
Proceedings 2023, 84(1), 14; https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023084014
Published: 23 February 2023
(This article belongs to the Proceedings of More Than Just Milk Lactation Science Symposium)
Abstract
:Bacteriophages (phages) are viruses that are the natural predators of bacteria and highly abundant in human milk and the infant gut microbiome. However, the effect of pasteurisation on human milk phages is unknown. This study, therefore, assessed the effect of holder pasteurisation (HP) and UV-C irradiation (UV) on exogenous bacteriophages inoculated into human milk. Ten donor human milk samples inoculated with a thermotolerant Escherichia coli phage (T4) and a thermosensitive Staphylococcus aureus phage (BYJ20) were subjected to HP and UV treatments. We found that UV effectively inactivated both phages (8/10 samples; 80%), however, HP was ineffective against the thermotolerant T4 phages (0/10; 0% inactivated). This is the first study to assess the impact of UV and HP methods on the viability of human milk phages. This pilot data suggests that HP methods used by milk banks likely destroy thermosensitive, but not thermotolerant, phages, with implications for early-life virome and bacterial microbiome assembly in donor milk fed infants.
Author Contributions
L.F.S., D.T.G., and L.L.F. designed research; L.F.S. and L.L.F. conducted research; L.L.F. analysed data and had primary responsibility for final content. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
Funding
L.L.F. was supported by the Raine Medical Research Foundation and Forrest Research Foundation. D.T.G. and L.F.S. were supported by an unrestricted research grant from Medela AG (Switzerland), administered by The University of Western Australia.
Institutional Review Board Statement
This study was conducted in accordance with the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Human Research Ethics Committee at The University of Western Australia (RA/4/1/2369). All participants provided written informed consent.
Informed Consent Statement
Informed consent was obtained from all subjects involved in the study.
Data Availability Statement
Not applicable.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge Jeremy Barr for providing the T4 phage and thank all of the mothers that participated in this study by donating breastmilk. We acknowledge Matthew Payne for the use of their lab space for this study and are grateful to Sharon Perrella, Zoya Gridneva, and Ashleigh Warden for their assistance in recruiting participants for this study.
Conflicts of Interest
L.F.S. and D.T.G. are supported by an unrestricted research grant from Medela AG, administered by The University of Western Australia. This funding body had no role in the design of the study, collection/analysis/interpretation of data, writing of the manuscript, or in the decision to publish the results. L.L.F. has no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content. |
© 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Share and Cite
MDPI and ACS Style
Stinson, L.F.; Geddes, D.T.; Furfaro, L.L. Effect of Pasteurisation Techniques on Phages in Human Milk. Proceedings 2023, 84, 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023084014
AMA Style
Stinson LF, Geddes DT, Furfaro LL. Effect of Pasteurisation Techniques on Phages in Human Milk. Proceedings. 2023; 84(1):14. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023084014
Chicago/Turabian StyleStinson, Lisa F., Donna T. Geddes, and Lucy L. Furfaro. 2023. "Effect of Pasteurisation Techniques on Phages in Human Milk" Proceedings 84, no. 1: 14. https://doi.org/10.3390/proceedings2023084014
