Colostrum is a type of milk a mother produces in the first few days after birth. Human mothers and many mammals, including cows, produce it. Bovine means cow. So, today, we will be talking about whether cow colostrum is helpful in fighting upper respiratory infections (URI). Some independent companies have created bovine colostrum products and shown their “effectiveness” in “preventing” URI.
Before we go into the effectiveness of these products, we want to highlight the effectiveness of Bovine Colostrum in regular calves. Colostrum normally has a lot of immunity-related proteins that help protect babies from infection. These immunity factors change from mother to mother based on what infection they’ve been vaccinated against and what infection they’ve encountered, and their bodies have created antibodies by themselves. We have written a scientific article and included our references to learn more about what antibodies are included in a colostrum.
All of the Bovine Colostrum products being marketed on the internet are non-hyperimmune. Non-hyperimmune means the cows producing milk have not been vaccinated or exposed to the infection, such as flu, to have created antibodies to protect them. Based on the research studies, most of them did not use blinded studies, did not test the subjects showing signs of URI for flu, and did not find any objective measures that showed any positive changes in the course of symptoms other than patient-reported data. Blood tests for inflammation were not changed either, and subjects who were showing serious signs of URI were removed from the studies and the data points. Finally, all these research articles were published in low-impact factor journals and were performed at non-academic research facilities. A lot of them also had financial relations with the product manufacturer, which might bias the results.
Based on all the evidence, the study designs seem to lack the proper scientific protocol to provide accurate results. In conclusion, bovine colostrum has the potential to become useful only if the cows are hyperimmune to the infections being prevented.
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Key Takeaways:
Colostrum is a type of milk a mother produces in the first few days after birth. Human mothers and many mammals, including cows, produce it.
Colostrum normally has a lot of immunity-related proteins that help protect babies from infection.
All of the Bovine Colostrum products being marketed on the internet are non-hyperimmune (cows not vaccinated to create antibodies to protect you from diseases).
Researchers had financial relations with product manufacturers, had poor design with subjective data reporting by participants, inflammatory markers were unchanged, and flu testing was not performed to identify if the symptoms were from actual flu or other viral infections like the common cold.
In conclusion, bovine colostrum has the potential to become useful only if the cows are hyperimmune to the infections being prevented.