Human Milk Oligosaccharides In Banked Donor Milk Compared To Mother's Milk In The NICU

Abstract

Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMO) are the third most abundant component of human milk. More than a hundred structurally distinct HMO have been identified, and the HMO composition varies between mothers as well as over the course of lactation. Newborn infants receive donor milk (DM) when their mother's milk (MM) is inadequate or unavailable. Our objective was to compare HMO content between DM and MM. We used HPLC‐FL analysis of fluorescently labeled HMO to analyze the variation in HMO amount and composition of 30 different batches of DM provided by the Mother's Milk Bank in San Jose, California, and compared it to MM samples donated by mothers of infants in our NICU. Concentrations and variations of lacto‐N‐tetraose, lacto‐N‐neotetraose, lacto‐N‐fucopentaose I and disialyllacto‐N‐tetraose were significantly lower in DM than in MM. Recent in vitro and animal studies have started to link individual HMO to infant health and disease, and our new data may suggest that HMO in DM does not always provide the same benefits as MM.