Department of Pediatrics, Division of Neonatology, Dokuz Eylul University Faculty of Medicine, Mithatpasa Street, Inciralti, 35340, Izmir, Turkey.
Clin Epigenetics. 2012 Sep 18;4(1):14. doi: 10.1186/1868-7083-4-14.
A wet nurse can be used if a baby's natural mother is unable or chooses not to breastfeed her infant. The practice of using wet nurses is ancient and common to many cultures.
We hypothesize that infants breastfeeding from the same woman may develop consanguinity even in cases in which they are not blood relatives, and that children of two individuals breastfed by the same woman may thus be at risk of several genetic diseases because of such consanguinity.
Possible evidence for the milk kinship hypothesis is to be found in the composition of breast milk, which is composed of living substances such as stem cells or substances that can affect epigenetic regulation such as microRNAs.
If these epigenetic modifications are heritable, marriages between individuals breastfed by the same woman may result in the same consequences as consanguineous marriages. In this paper, we attempt to assess this possibility.
如果婴儿的生母无法或选择不母乳喂养她的婴儿，可以使用奶妈。使用奶妈是一种古老的做法，在许多文化中都很常见。
我们假设母乳喂养同一个女人的婴儿可能会产生血缘关系，即使他们不是血缘亲属，因此，由同一个女人母乳喂养的两个孩子可能会因为这种血缘关系而面临多种遗传疾病的风险。
可以在母乳的成分中找到牛奶亲缘关系假说的可能证据，母乳由活物质组成，如干细胞或可以影响表观遗传调控的物质，如 microRNAs。
如果这些表观遗传修饰是可遗传的，那么由同一个女人母乳喂养的个体之间的婚姻可能会产生与血缘婚姻相同的后果。在本文中，我们试图评估这种可能性。
