On September 2nd, America’s EurekAlert reported on Dr. Guan Joan and Zhan-Shan Ma’s progress in studying human breast milk microbial metagenomics. They are re-analyzing the data published in the United States by Katherine Hunt and Dr. Mark McGuire of the University of Idaho. Hunt's study, published in 2011, is thus far the most comprehensive and large-scale study on human breast milk microflora ever published, and was widely covered by the American mainstream media.

Dr. Ma’s laboratory used Dr. Hunt’s data in order to analyze the interactions between different bacteria that co-exist in breast milk. When one element of this precariously balanced environment moves out of line, there’s an opportunity for one or more strains of bacteria to become dangerous.

This first part of Dr. Ma’s study is called "Ecological analysis of milk microflora," and was published in China’s "Science Bulletin" (2014, 22 edition), available here: http://csb.scichina.com:8080/kxtb/CN/10.1360/N972014-00098.

It has also been extensively covered by foreign and domestic media:

Http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-09/scp-ahb090214.php

Http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/281933.php

Http://chinese.eurekalert.org/zh/pub_releases/2014-09/scp-ahb090214.php

(By Andrew Willden)