ucsdhealthsciences:

New Reason for Mothers to Breastfeed

Lars Bode, PhD, assistant professor in neonatal medicine and pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at UC San Diego School of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, recently published a study in GUT, the official journal of the British Society of Gastroenterology, showing that human milk oligosaccharides (HMO) significantly lowered the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis.

Necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) is one of the most frequent and often fatal intestinal disorders in premature infants. Up to 5% of all premature infants with a very low birth weight develop NEC. More than a quarter of them die from this devastating disease and the survivors are often faced with severe long-term complications. Why and how NEC develops remains poorly understood and treatment is limited, surgical removal of the necrotic intestine often being the last option.

According to previous studies, breast-fed infants are at a 6- to 10-fold lower risk of developing NEC than formula-fed infants.

“Human milk oligosaccharides are complex sugars that are highly abundant in human milk, but not in infant formula,” said Bode.  “Previous studies had suggested that HMOs affect the infant’s immune system as well as the composition of bacteria in the infant’s gut; both seem to be involved in the development of NEC.”

In the GUT research paper, Bode and colleagues found that out of the more than 150 oligosaccharides that are unique to human milk, a single oligosaccharide, Disialyllacto-N-tetraose (DSLNT), is responsible for the beneficial effects of lowering the risk of NEC in neonatal rats. In addition, the published results show that galactooligosaccharides (GOS), which are currently used as HMO-like oligosaccharides to supplement infant formula, have no effect on NEC in neonatal rats.

In discovering the correlation between DSLNT levels and its impact on reducing NEC in neonates, the study also suggests that low DSLNT concentrations in the mother’s milk might become a non-invasive biomarker to identify breast-fed infants at risk to develop NEC.

“While supplementing infant formula with DSLNT might protect the formula-fed infant from NEC, it is still an incredibly expensive and highly complex process,” said Jae Kim, MD, PhD, medical director for the SPIN – Supporting Premature Infant Nutrition – program at UC San Diego Health System. “Human milk is often the primary dietary source for the first few months in life. It contains all the nutrients necessary for the infant to thrive, but also ingredients such as HMO that may provide health benefits beyond those of traditional nutrients.”
 
“Our ultimate goal is to encourage mothers to breastfeed their infants. People always think we do basic research with the goal to develop new drugs, but increasing the rate of breastfeeding would help the most,” says Bode.

Visit the Bode lab site

ABOUT SPIN at UC San Diego
Premature infants who receive human breast milk have the best outcomes – medically, nutritionally, and developmentally. Within the Neonatology Division at UC San Diego’s Department of Pediatrics, the Supporting Premature Infant Nutrition (SPIN) program was developed to address the challenges of helping mothers produce sufficient breast milk for their premature infants, and to improve the manner in which neonatal intensive care unit (NICUs) support optimal nutrition and growth in their most vulnerable population of patients.