When a woman stops breastfeeding, her breasts go from being full-time, milk-producing factories to regular appendages…Now a molecular switch has been identified that controls their transformation from milk secretors to cellular eaters that gobble up their dying neighbors.
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[O]nce women stop breastfeeding, these structures self-destruct…Here is the mystery: the body’s immune cells usually remove dead and dying cells through…phagocytosis, yet…significant inflammation, pain and tissue damage…doesn’t typically happen when breastfeeding ceases.…
To investigate, [Nasreen Akhtar at the University of Sheffield] deleted the gene for Rac1 in female mice; their first litter of pups survived…[but] subsequent litters of pups died. Further experiments revealed that in the absence of Rac1, dead cells and milk flooded the breasts, triggering swelling and a state of chronic inflammation, which impaired the mice’s ability to regenerate their tissue and produce milk in later pregnancies.
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The findings could have consequences for understanding the development and progression of breast cancer…One theory is that inflammation during this period of remodeling after breastfeeding may fuel cancer growth.
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