OBJECTIVES Our goal was to describe the prevalence of any, occasional, and regular breast milk expression, mothers' reasons for expressing their milk, and sociodemographic factors associated with breast milk expression. PARTICIPANTS AND METHODS Breastfeeding mothers participating in the 2005-2007 Infant Feeding Practices Study II formed the cohort for these analyses, which were conducted amon...

Human milk is the preferred food for infants, including ill and preterm infants. Ensuring skilled and comprehensive breastfeeding support for these vulnerable infants requires a specialized approach. The author outlines 10 steps for promoting and protecting breastfeeding in vulnerable infants. The steps include providing the parents with information necessary to make an informed decision to bre...

BACKGROUND Live oral rotavirus vaccines have been less immunogenic and efficacious among children in poor developing countries compared with middle income and industrialized countries for reasons that are not yet completely understood. We assessed whether the neutralizing activity of breast milk could lower the titer of vaccine virus and explain this difference in vitro. METHODS Breast milk s...

The odor of human breast milk after ingestion of raw garlic at food-relevant concentrations by breastfeeding mothers was investigated for the first time chemo-analytically using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/olfactometry (GC-MS/O), as well as sensorially using a trained human sensory panel. Sensory evaluation revealed a clear garlic/cabbage-like odor that appeared in breast milk about 2....

Egg yolk oil is a natural source of bioactive compounds such as DHA, fat–soluble vitamins, lutein, phospholipids and cholesterol. These important compounds are also found in breast milk: DHA for infant brain development, lutein for eye health, vitamins A and E to support developing cells. Egg yolk oil naturally contains vitamin D which is required for a normal bone development. Fatty acid profi...

Human milk is the most favorable nutrition for infants. Unfortunately, human breast milk also contains traces of persistent organochlorines (OC). This leads to exposure throughout the breastfeeding period. The levels of OC in milk depend on many factors such as mothers age, number of deliveries and lactation periods, place of residence, changes in the mother's weight during lactation or nutrition.

The gastrointestinal (GI) microbiota differs between breast-fed and classic infant formula-fed infants. Breast milk is rich in prebiotic oligosaccharides (OS) and may also contain some probiotics, but scientific societies do not recommend the addition of prebiotic OS or probiotics to standard infant formula. Nevertheless, many infant formula companies often add one or the other or both. Differe...

Breast-feeding may expose infants to high levels of toxic chlorinated dioxins. To diminish intake of these lipophilic compounds by the baby, two diets were tested for their ability to reduce concentrations of dioxins in human milk. The diets were a low-fat/high- carbohydrate/low-dioxin diet. (about 20% of energy intake derived from fat) and a high fat /low-carbohydrate/low-dioxin diet. These di...

BACKGROUND Mammary stem cells have been extensively studied as a system to delineate the pathogenesis and treatment of breast cancer. However, research on mammary stem cells requires tissue biopsies which limit the quantity of samples available. We have previously identified putative mammary stem cells in human breast milk, and here, we further characterised the cellular component of human brea...