Or, Sci-News.com seems to be saying, a protein from breast milk at least undoes a certain level of antibiotic resistance in some pretty nasty germs:
In petri dish and animal experiments, HAMLET (Human Alpha-lactalbumin Made Lethal to Tumor Cells) increased bacteria’s sensitivity to multiple classes of antibiotics, such as penicillin and erythromycin.
“The effect was so pronounced that bacteria including penicillin-resistant S. pneumoniae and methicillin-resistant S. aureus (MRSA) regained sensitivity to the antibiotics they were previously able to beat,” said lead author Laura Marks and her colleagues from the University at Buffalo.
In a 2012 study published in PLoS ONE, the team described HAMLET’s effects against S. pneumoniae, also Acinetobacter baumanii and Moraxella catarrhalis. The newly-published PLoS ONE paper details protein’s effects on MRSA.
Here’s the link to the study, if you’d like to read further.