Abstract
Cytokines and growth factors in colostrum and mature milk may play an important role in infant immune maturation, and may vary significantly between populations. We aimed to examine associations between environmental and maternal factors, and human milk (HM) cytokine and growth factor levels. We recruited 398 pregnant/lactating women in the United Kingdom, Russia, and Italy. Participants underwent skin prick testing, questionnaire interview, and colostrum and mature milk sampling. HM cytokine and growth factor levels were quantified by electro-chemiluminescence. We found significant geographical variation in growth factor levels, but no evidence of variation between sites in cytokine detectability. There was an inverse correlation between time of milk sampling and growth factor levels in colostrum for Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) and TGFβ1 and TGFβ3, but not TGFβ2, and levels were significantly higher in colostrum than mature milk for all growth factors. The kinetics of decline were different for each growth factor. Cytokines were present at much lower levels than growth factors, and the decline over time was less consistent. HM growth factors and cytokine levels vary between populations for unknown reasons. Levels of HM mediators decline at different rates postpartum, and these findings suggest specific biological roles for HM growth factors and cytokines in early postnatal development.
Highlights
Human milk (HM) is usually the first source of nutrition for a newborn, and an important factor assisting infants in the first months of life, as a nutrition source and as a manner of adapting infants to their extra-uterine environment
Hepatocyte Growth Factor (HGF) levels were lower in the colostrum/milk of Italian mothers and TGFβ2 and TGFβ3 were higher in colostrum/milk of UK mothers with the same significant difference for colostral TGFβ1 (Figure 2)
If we assume biological relevance, these results suggest that infants need relatively higher amounts of TGFβ1 and TGFβ2 for longer than that of TGFβ3 or HGF
Summary
Human milk (HM) is usually the first source of nutrition for a newborn, and an important factor assisting infants in the first months of life, as a nutrition source and as a manner of adapting infants to their extra-uterine environment. Data from a variety of studies suggest that factors such as country of maternal origin, diet, exercise, and exposure to smoke or farming environment in early life may influence colostrum and HM constituents [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22]. As levels of HGF are 20 to 30 times higher in colostrum than in maternal serum [26] it is reasonable to propose that HGF is actively excreted into HM in order to support infant’s gut immunity maturation and growth
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