Donkey milk production: State of the art

Milk is one of the most common causes of food allergies among children under one year of age. No specific therapy exists for this allergy, and thus the only feasible response is to avoid assumption of milk and derived products. Studies conducted on the serum of children with hypersensi- tivity to milk have shown that caseins are the proteins with the greater allergenic potential. However, in some cases, children have also shown hypersensitivity to the β-lactoglobulines and to the α-lactal- bumins. When food intolerance is diagnosed in an infant, it is often necessary to impose a period of total parenteral feeding, followed by breast feeding, considered the most correct method of re-feeding. When human milk can not be given, alternative food sources must be sought. Clinical studies have demonstrated that donkey milk could substitute breast feeding in infants affected by severe Ig-E me- diated milk allergies. In these subjects, donkey milk is not only useful, but also safer than other types of milk. In fact donkey milk composition in lipids (high levels of linoleic and linolenic acid) and pro- teins (low caseins content) is very close to human milk. Lysozyme content in donkey milk resulted to be very high (mean value 1.0 mg/ml) if compared to bovine (traces), caprine (traces) and human milk. The high lysozyme content of donkey milk may be responsible of the low bacterial count reported in literature and also makes this milk suitable to prevent intestine infections to infants. Among seropro- teins, β-lactoglobulin and α-lactalbumin content in donkey milk was respectively 3.75 and 1.80 mg/ml and remained substancially the same during the different stages of lactation.