New Chemical and Engineering News Cover

[mom2katie]

I don't know if this was posted but DH and I are/used to be material scientists and so we still get a professional magazine called Chemical and Engineering News. The cover story is about unraveling the contents of breastmilk and the cover shows a baby (who appears to me to be 9-12 months) nursing. Here is a link:

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/currentissue.html

[menomena]

Cool!

What was the article like?

[SimonMom]

Lebrilla's work to illuminate the oligosaccharide composition of milk is now being used to test what researchers believe is a major role of oligosaccharides in milk: As a food source for particular bacteria, they coax health-promoting microbes to colonize the digestive tracts of infants. The sugars in human breast milk, for example, appeal to certain strains of bacteria, called bifidobacteria, that can colonize the gut and appear to be important for the health of infants. Well-established colonies of bifidobacteria can prevent pathogens such as harmful strains of Escherichia coli from getting a foothold.

very interesting

[SimonMom]

and

The role of oligosaccharides in infant health is not, however, limited to feeding bacteria. The epithelial cells that line the intestine are decorated with glycans that mediate communication with the extracellular environment, facilitating cell-cell communication as well as binding to signaling agents. Intestinal pathogens frequently bind to those glycans as part of pathogenesis. Free oligosaccharides can, therefore, serve as decoys or inhibitors to prevent pathogen binding to intestinal cells. Lebrilla and colleagues have recently demonstrated that human milk oligosaccharides interfere with human immunodeficiency virus binding to dendritic cells, helping to explain why a majority of infants breast-fed by HIV-positive mothers do not develop the disease (Br. J. Nutr., DOI: 10.1017/S0007114508025804).

there's lots more

[mom2katie]

I found the article fascinating. It is fairly technical but it is written about the work of a group of scientists who are trying to determine the function of oligosaccharides in human milk. They have found out very interesting results and the general tone of the article is that breast milk is an amazing substance that has evolved along with humans, and we know very little about how it actually works. Definitely reinforced my view that there is no way any current formula could measure up.

As an aside, I find it ironic that the cover of a magazine for chemists can show a nursing child without controversy but if the same cover was on a mainstream parenting magazine, it would cause an uproar.

ETA: Their findings very much reinforce the idea that even just one bottle of formula will change the bacteria in the gut and could cause problems.