Passing of Unwanted Substances
Despite the risk of substances transmitting from the mother to the child through breast milk, breastfeeding has far more advantages than infant formulas, and, with few exceptions, the WHO recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life.
The milk-producing cells are most permeable to drugs during the first postpartum week.
Drug characteristics that increase excretion in milk include:
- Not plasma protein binding
- Non-ionized
- Low molecular weight
- Lipid solubility rather than water solubility
- Weakly alkaline rather than weak acid
Drugs are transferred from blood plasma across ductal cells to the milk by diffusion or active transport. The latter may result in higher concentration of the drug in the breast milk than in the plasma of the mother.
The amounts of most drugs in milk do not exceed 2% of the total ingested dose.
Read more about this topic: Breast Milk
Famous quotes containing the words passing of, passing and/or unwanted:
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Chamber from chamber parted with wavering arras of leaves,—
Cells for the passionate pleasure of prayer to the soul that grieves,
Pure with a sense of the passing of saints through the wood,
Cool for the dutiful weighing of ill with good;—”
—Sidney Lanier (1842–1881)
“It may be possible to do without dancing entirely. Instances have been known of young people passing many, many months successively, without being at any ball of any description, and no material injury accrue either to body or mind; Mbut when a beginning is made—when felicities of rapid motion have once been, though slightly, felt—it must be a very heavy set that does not ask for more.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)
“It is like any other work of art.
It is and never can be changed.
Behind everything there is always
The unknown unwanted life.”
—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)