Abstract
Over the last few years, research indicated that Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) may serve to enhance cognition during development. HMOs hereby provide an exciting avenue in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that contribute to cognitive development. Therefore, this review aims to summarize the reported observations regarding the effects of HMOs on memory and cognition in rats, mice and piglets. Our main findings illustrate that the administration of fucosylated (single or combined with Lacto-N-neoTetraose (LNnT) and other oligosaccharides) and sialylated HMOs results in marked improvements in spatial memory and an accelerated learning rate in operant tasks. Such beneficial effects of HMOs on cognition already become apparent during infancy, especially when the behavioural tasks are cognitively more demanding. When animals age, its effects become increasingly more apparent in simpler tasks as well. Furthermore, the combination of HMOs with other oligosaccharides yields different effects on memory performance as opposed to single HMO administration. In addition, an enhanced hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP) response both at a young and at a mature age are reported as well. These results point towards the possibility that HMOs administered either in singular or combination forms have long-lasting, beneficial effects on memory and cognition in mammals.
Highlights
The natural composition of breast milk is well recognized as the golden standard of infant nutrition [1] and is associated with long-term health benefits [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]
To the best of our knowledge, this review is the first to summarise the effects of fucosylated and sialylated Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs) on cognition and electrophysiological brain recordings in rodents and piglets. The effects of both types of HMOs uncovered in the reported investigations unequivocally point towards long lasting beneficial effects on cognition and memory, which is further supported by changes in the underlying physiological mechanisms as measured by Long Term Potentiation (LTP) [46,47,48,49]
Differences reside in the immediate environment upon birth and the extent to which the brain and body have developed at that point, as neonatal rat pups would be more comparable to prenatal piglets in the final days before parturition, and there are no studies performed on the cognitive effects of HMOs on piglets in young adulthood
Summary
The natural composition of breast milk is well recognized as the golden standard of infant nutrition [1] and is associated with long-term health benefits [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Indications that breastfeeding confers protective effects in the onset and course of allergic diseases such as atopic dermatitis, food allergy and asthma have emerged over the recent years [7,8,9]. Such protective effects of breastfeeding have been attributed to multiple factors related to the gut, as it is found that breastfeeding can improve immune functioning, promoting a healthy gut microflora [11]. The mental health benefits that breastfeeding provides have garnered much more attention in Nutrients 2020, 12, 3572; doi:10.3390/nu12113572 www.mdpi.com/journal/nutrients
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