Fats in Human Milk: 2022 Updates on Chemical Composition

JOURNAL TITLE: Newborn

Author
ISSN
DOI
10.5005/jp-journals-11002-0050
Volume
1
Issue
4
Publishing Year
2022
Pages
13
Article keywords
Donor milk, Infants, Mother\'s own milk, Neonate, Neonatal intensive care unit, Newborn, Premature, Triglycerides

Abstract

Human milk (HM) feedings are important for all newborn infants. Healthy term infants grow well with the mother\'s own milk (MOM), be it in direct breastfeeding or when fed expressed breastmilk. Premature and ill infants being treated/monitored in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) also recover better when fed with HM diets, which can include MOM, donor milk (DM), or a combination of both. In terms of chemical composition, it contains 3–5% fat, 0.8–0.9% protein, 6.9–7.2% carbohydrates (calculated as lactose), and 0.2% mineral constituents. In this review, we present the latest information on HM fats, including triglycerides, phospholipids, triglycerides, cholesterol, glycoproteins, and enzymes. This article is intended to initiate a series of periodic updates on the scientific information available on HM fats. It contains some of our own research findings with an extensive review of the literature. To avoid bias in the identification of studies, keywords were short-listed a priori from anecdotal experience and from PubMed\'s Medical Subject Heading (MeSH) thesaurus. We then searched the databases PubMed, EMBASE, and Science Direct.

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