Abstract
ABSTRACTThe fatty acid (FA) composition in human milk, bovine milk and infant formula from the northeast region of China was analyzed by gas chromatography (GC). The content of linoleic acid (LA, C18:2n6) in bovine milk (2.53 %) was lower than human milk (25.58 %) and formula milk (20.56 %). The trends of LA and α-linolenic acid (ALA, C18:3n3) in human milk increased significantly throughout the lactation while a decreasing trend for LA was observed and the difference of ALA was not significant in both bovine and formula milks. The proportion of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, C22:6n3) and arachidonic acid (ARA, 20:4n6) in human milk and formula were declining with the change of lactation or infant age. We suggest there should be more detailed distinction with reference to human milk in the infant formula in order to meet infant’s personalized nutrition, especially the FA composition in the 1st month after delivery.
Highlights
Human milk, a complex biological fluid containing different constituents, is ideally satisfied to the infant’s nutritional requirements in the first half of year of human life (Fuquay, Fox, & McSweeney, 2011)
The cause of the changes of LA, ALA, DHA and ARA in human milk could be expounded as follows: 1) a competitive inhibition exists between the metabolism of n-3 and n-6 fatty acid families since the process that LA and ALA are converted to ARA and DHA respectively by diverse desaturase- and elongase-enzymes share the same series of enzymes (Salem, Wegher, Mena, & Uauy, 1996; Schmitz, Ecker, 2008). 2) 6
We found that the content of polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) of human milk in our study is higher than Wenzhou (21.54 %) and Changzhou (29.73 %) while the SFA are lower than the content in the two regions (Wenzhou, 42.90 %; Changzhou, 36.63 %) but MUFA (Wenzhou, 35.55 %; Changzhou, 33.64 %) are the exact opposite (Peng et al, 2009), the differences are not significant
Summary
A complex biological fluid containing different constituents, is ideally satisfied to the infant’s nutritional requirements in the first half of year of human life (Fuquay, Fox, & McSweeney, 2011). There are only about 38 % of infants worldwide who are completely breast-fed in their first six months after birth (World Health Organization [WHO], 2010) In this case, infant formulas become an important nutritional source for them (WHO, 1992). The composition and content of FA in human milk are dynamic and variable within a feeding, diurnally, over lactation, between mothers, and other factors (Chung, 2014). Main n-6 and n-3 PUFA showed fluctuations from the 1st week up to 16th week of lactation, for example, ARA significantly dropped from transitional to mature period. This trend was confirmed by Yu, Duchen, and Björkstén (1998). Unlike the dynamic changes of the FA in human milk, all infant formulas are fortified to the same and they are ‘one-size-fits-all’ based on authoritative criterion and standard including commission directive 2006/141/ EC (European Communities[EC], 2006), code of federal regulations 21CFR107 (Food and Drug Administration [FDA], 2014), codex stan 72–1981
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