Table 6.

Health‐promoting factors in breastmilk and saliva*

Antimicrobial factors	Cytokines and anti‐inflammatory factors
secretory IgA, IgM, IgG (Norhagen et al. 1989)  lactoferrin (Tenovuo 1989)  lysozyme (Tenovuo 1989)  complement components (Andoh et al. 1997)  leucocytes (Wright 1959)  lipids and fatty acids (Tenovuo 1989)  antiviral mucins, GAGs (Shugars 1999)  oligosaccharides (Rosenblum et al. 1988)  thiocyanate (breastmilk: Kirk et al. 2007; saliva: Schultz et al. 1996)	tumour necrosis factor (Pezelj‐Ribaric et al. 2004)  interleukins (Dugue et al. 1996)  interferon‐g (Sfriso et al. 2003)  prostaglandins (Kasinathan et al. 1995)  platelet‐activating factor: acetyl hydrolase (Ribaldi et al. 1998)
Hormones	Growth factors
insulin (Marchetti et al. 1986)  prolactin (Vining & McGinley 1986)  thyroid hormones (Vining & McGinley 1986)  corticosteroids: ACTH (Lowe & Dixon 1983)  oxytocin (Carter et al. 2007)	epidermal (EGF) (Kagami et al. 2000)  nerve (NGF) (Kagami et al. 2000)  insulin‐like (IGF) (Kagami et al. 2000)  transforming (TGF) (Kagami et al. 2000)  taurine (Soderling et al. 2002)  polyamines (Venza et al. 2001)
Digestive enzymes	Transporters
amylase (Tenovuo 1989)  esterase (Tenovuo 1989)  lipases (Tenovuo 1989) †	lactoferrin (Fe) (Komine et al. 2007)  folate binder (Verma & Antony 1992)  cobalamin binder (Hippe 1972)  corticosteroid binder (Gröschl et al. 2008)

^* Breastmilk factors, except for thiocyanate, are from major review by Prentice (1996). All other references in parentheses, are references for presence of these factors in saliva;

^† Lipase may have a different form of aggregation in breastmilk and saliva (Larsson et al. 1996) but whether this results in different functions has not been established.