Plasma amino acid pattern in normal term breast-fed infants

Abstract

It seems reasonable that amino acid solutions used for parenteral nutrition should lead to a plasma amino acid pattern that resembles that of the normal, postprandial concentrations of amino acids in breast-fed infants. Previous studies of postprandial plasma amino acid concentrations have been inadequate for several reasons, such as consumption of infant formulas of different composition, inadequate intake of human milk, varying times of postprandial plasma sampling, a wide range of infants studied, and incomplete data sets lacking one or more nutritionally important amino acids? -4 Our study was designed to obtain complete plasma amino acid data for the breast-fed infant. It has been suggested that this normal plasma amino acid pattern represents the optimal pattern for supporting growth, and possibly for estimating repletion of the nutritionally compromised patients. METHODS Subjects were infants of multiparous women 15 to 28 years of age (mean 22.9 years), 20 Hispanic and one black, who met the following entry criteria: mothers of normal nutriture as assessed by using appropriate weight and height charts; term neonates appropriate for age, with normal weight/length ratio using the ponderal index of Miller and HassaneinS; both mothers and infants healthy; informed consent; infants exclusively breast-fed during the first month of life. This study was approved by the Research Committee of the Los Angeles County-University of Southern California Medical Center and the USC School of Medicine.