A Comparison of Mother's Milk and the Neonatal Urine Metabolome: A Unique Fingerprinting for Different Nutritional Phenotypes.

Angelica Dessì,Flaminia Cesare Marincola,Alessandra Marzullo,Rocco Agostino,Michele Mussap,Sara Corbu,Roberta Pintus,Vassilios Fanos,Maria Grazia Pattumelli,Alice Bosco

doi:10.3390/metabo12020113

Angelica Dessì, Flaminia Cesare Marincola + Show 8 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/metabo12020113

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Journal: Metabolites	Publication Date: Jan 25, 2022
Citations: 2	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Cagliari, Fatebenefratelli Hospital

Abstract

The ability of metabolomics to provide a snapshot of an individual’s metabolic state makes it a very useful technique in neonatology for investigating the complex relationship between nutrition and the state of health of the newborn. Through an 1H-NMR metabolomics analysis, we aimed to investigate the metabolic profile of newborns by analyzing both urine and milk samples in relation to the birth weight of neonates classified as AGA (adequate for the gestational age, n = 51), IUGR (intrauterine growth restriction, n = 14), and LGA (large for gestational age, n = 15). Samples were collected at 7 ± 2 days after delivery. Of these infants, 42 were exclusively breastfed, while 38 received mixed feeding with a variable amount of commercial infant formula (less than 40%) in addition to breast milk. We observed a urinary spectral pattern for oligosaccharides very close to that of the corresponding mother’s milk in the case of exclusively breastfed infants, thus mirroring the maternal phenotype. The absence of this good match between the infant urine and human milk spectra in the case of mixed-fed infants could be reasonably ascribed to the use of a variable amount of commercial infant formulas (under 40%) added to breast milk. Furthermore, our findings did not evidence any significant differences in the spectral profiles in terms of the neonatal customize centile, i.e., AGA (adequate for gestational age), LGA (large for gestational age), or IGUR (intrauterine growth restriction). It is reasonable to assume that maternal human milk oligosaccharide (HMO) production is not or is only minimally influenced by the fetal growth conditions for unknown reasons. This hypothesis may be supported by our metabolomics-based results, confirming once again the importance of this approach in the neonatal field.

Highlights

80 mothers provided a human milk sample collected at 7 ± 2 days postpartum, and a urine specimen was taken from their own infant on the same day
Forty-two infants received exclusively their own mother’s milk, while 38 received a mixed feeding with a variable amount of commercial infant formulas in addition to breast milk
The fucosylation pattern of human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) mostly reflects the expression and activity of two genes located in two different loci of the short arm of chromosome 19: the secretor gene (Se) and the Lewis gene of blood groups (Le)

Summary

Introduction

The presence of hundreds to thousands of different bioactive molecules provides the breast milk with many properties, including protection from infection and inflammation, and contribution to the maturation of the immune system and to the development of the nascent microbiota. Some of these compounds are characterized by a considerable variability, both between mothers and according to gestational age and the stage of breastfeeding, in support of an important reactivity of breast milk to the changing needs of the newborn [1]. The qualitative and quantitative composition of HMOs is strongly influenced by the maternal phenotype [2], diet [3], the pre-pregnancy BMI [4,5], the geographical area where the mother lives [6], and by several other environmental factors [7]

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