Team develops new device to identify biomarkers of breastfeeding complications

A team of researchers led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created a new sensor to detect sodium ions in breast milk, a biomarker of elevated mammary permeability, a hallmark of subclinical mastitis that may contribute to milk supply issues and hinder breastfeeding in new mothers.

The work is published in the journal Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical.

Only a quarter of mothers in the U.S. meet recommendations to exclusively breastfeed for the first six months of their babies’ lives, making it a priority for researchers to address the challenges surrounding breastfeeding. One such hurdle may be subclinical mastitis, an asymptomatic inflammation of the breast.

Kathleen Arcaro, professor of veterinary and animal sciences, who specializes in studying breast milk and is an author on this work, says that there is evidence that women who have elevated permeability in the tissues that line the mammary gland (a hallmark of subclinical mastitis) at one-week postpartum are less likely to continue breastfeeding.

However, properly identifying the condition is a challenge. Unlike typical mastitis that causes pain, swelling and fever, subclinical mastitis has no outward symptoms. And while a high concentration of sodium in breast milk is a biomarker for this condition, “surprisingly, there is almost no technique that is available to detect it at low cost, high precision and short time,” says Jinglei Ping, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and corresponding author of the paper. “No one will just send breast milk samples to a lab, which can be expensive.”

“Professor Arcaro and colleagues suggested that detecting sodium in breast milk in an easy and inexpensive and quick way could have a huge impact on the health of new mothers,” he continues. “It may help identify new parents who are struggling with their milk supply. This is important because there are ways to address elevated mammary permeability.”

Their solution: Build a better testing device.

The device could provide highly sensitive sodium readings inexpensively, quickly and in a small footprint, similar in size to a blood sugar detector. Compared to the gold standard of testing, mass spectrometry, their device delivers results in three minutes instead of 30; is the size of a quarter instead of a lab bench; costs about $1 per test instead of $110, and $20 per device instead of $180,000; requires 1,000-fold less milk to test (microliters instead of milliliters); and is easy to use. Other tests that are more comparable in terms of time to deliver results and cost are less user-friendly, have a lower detection limit, and still have a larger equipment footprint.

“That’s what we want for a point-of-care test—low cost, high precision and high time efficiency,” says Ping. He can envision the device at simple clinics, similar to a blood pressure cuff in a drug store.

“There has been very little study of subclinical mastitis in women,” says Arcaro. “Most of what we know comes from the dairy industry because ‘subclinical mastitis’ is associated with qualitative changes in milk quality and reduced fat content, which decreases the value of milk.” She hopes this device will help push the research on this subject forward.