Effects on Maternal Macronutrient Intake Towards Human Milk’s Fatty Acids Composition

Abstract

While fatty acids found in human milk account for half of the energy consumed by exclusively breastfed infants, fatty acids such as monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) and long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) plays critical roles in infant growth. Fatty acids components in human milk are vary widely accordance to the maternal diet during lactation but has not been sufficiently studied. The objective of this paper was to determine the correlation between maternal macronutrient intake with human milk’s fatty acids composition among exclusively breastfeeding mothers. A total of N=36 lactating mothers were recruited based on convenience sampling basis from Dengkil, Selangor and Kuantan, Pahang. A 24-hour dietary recall (24HR) was used to capture mother’s dietary intake in the past 24 hours. The human milk sample was collected in the next day morning after the diet recall and stored before proceeded to another fatty acids extraction and transesterification process namely Blight and Dyer method. The composition of fatty acids methyl esters was analyzed and quantified by a gas chromatography (Agilent 7890A), equipped with a flame ionization detector (FID) and Agilent Chromatography Workstation software. As overall, the most abundance fatty acids found was SFA ranged (81.90 to 97.7 %) followed with MUFA (2.3 to 18.1%), but PUFA was below detection limit (BDL). Result also indicated that palmitic, stearic, and oleic acids were the three major types of fatty acids determined from human milk. Correlational study also determined that, there was no significant correlation between the human milk’s SFA and MUFA with the same dietary intake and another macronutrient like carbohydrate and protein. Even though there was no significant correlation determined for the most composition, various pattern of correlation was found in the study. Human milk’s SFA only had a positive correlation with dietary carbohydrate but negative with the rest. Different pattern also showed for human milk’s MUFA which only negatively correlate with carbohydrate and fats while positive for the rest. Thus, overall, this fat composition is known to have higher variation in terms of concentration of its components compared to another macronutrient even within the same population. Aside from geographical considerations, maternal nationality and age have a substantial impact on the fatty acid composition of human milk.