Mother’s own milk represents the optimal source for preterm infant nutrition, as it promotes immune defenses and gastrointestinal function, protects against necrotizing enterocolitis, improves long-term clinical outcome and is hypothesized to drive gut microbiota assembly. Preterm infants at birth usually do not receive their mother’s milk directly from the breast, because active suckling and coordination between suckling, swallowing and breathing do not develop until 32–34 weeks gestational age, but actual breastfeeding is usually possible as they grow older. Here, we enrolled moderately preterm infants (gestational age 32–34 weeks) to longitudinally characterize mothers’ milk and infants’ gut and oral microbiomes, up to more than 200 days after birth, through 16S rRNA sequencing. This peculiar population offers the chance to disentangle the differential contribution of human milk feeding per se vs. actual breastfeeding in the development of infant microbiomes, that have both been acknowledged as crucial contributors to short and long-term infant health status. In this cohort, the milk microbiome composition seemed to change following the infant’s latching to the mother’s breast, shifting toward a more diverse microbial community dominated by typical oral microbes, i.e., Streptococcus and Rothia. Even if all infants in the present study were fed human milk, features typical of healthy, full term, exclusively breastfed infants, i.e., high percentages of Bifidobacterium and low abundances of Pseudomonas in fecal and oral samples, respectively, were detected in samples taken after actual breastfeeding started. These findings underline the importance of encouraging not only human milk feeding, but also an early start of actual breastfeeding in preterm infants, since the infant’s latching to the mother’s breast might constitute an independent factor helping the health-promoting assembly of the infant gut microbiome.

The current study is based on the AFM1 contamination of milk determined from April 2013 to December 2018 in the framework of a self-control plan of six milk processing plants in Italy. These data – together with the consumption data of milk consumers – were evaluated and used for the calculation of the Estimated Daily Intake (EDI), the Hazard Index (HI), and the fraction of hepatocarcinoma cases (HCC) due to AFM1 exposure in different population groups. Altogether a total of 31,702 milk samples were analyzed, representing 556,413 tons of milk, which is an outstanding amount compared to published studies. The results indicate the monthly fluctuation of AFM1 levels through a period of nearly 6 years. The EDI of AFM1 in different population groups was in the range of 0.025–0.328 ng kg−1 body weight (bw) per day, based on the average consumption levels and weighted mean contamination of the milk in the study period. Considering average consumptions, in the groups of infants and toddlers, the HI calculation resulted in 1.64 and 1.4, respectively, while for older age groups, it was <1. The estimated fractions of HCC incidences attributable to the AFM1 intakes were 0.005 and 0.004 cases per 100,000 individuals in the 0–0.9 and 1–2.9-year age groups, respectively, and below 0.004 cases in the other age categories. The monthly average AFM1 contamination of tested milk consignments ranged between 7.19 and 22.53 ng kg−1. Although the results of this extensive investigation showed a low risk of HCC, the variability of climatic conditions throughout years that influence AFB1 contamination of feed and consequently AFM1 contamination of milk justifies their continuous monitoring and update of the risk assessment.

Bovine beta casein A1 is one of the most common variants in dairy cattle breeds; it is considered a risk factor in milk intolerance and in other important human diseases, because of the bioactive peptide beta casomorphin-7 (BCM7) produced by raw or processed A1-milk, but not by A2-milk, during digestion. The aim of this study was to perform a cheap and rapid method to investigate beta casein polymorphism in copious animals. The study included 2 dairy farms with a totally of 1230 cows. Beta casein genotypes were estimated evaluating Exon 7 region of bovine beta casein gene (CSN2) by sequences analysis. In the population included in the study 5 variants (A1, A2, B, F, I) and 13 genotypes (A1A1, A1A2, A1B, A1F, A1I, A2A2, A2B, A2F, A2I, BB, BF, BI, FI) were detected. The method showed high sensibility and specificity, resulted low-cost and few time consuming.

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The present work reports the enzymatic valorisation of the protein fraction of scotta, a dairy by-product representing the exhausted liquid residue of ricotta production. Scotta was subjected to ultra-filtration with membrane cut-offs from 500 to 4 kDa and the obtained protein-enriched fractions were used for the optimization of enzyme-based digestions aimed at producing potentially bioactive peptides. Nine different commercial proteases were tested and the best digestion conditions were selected based on protein yield, fraction bioactivity and foreseen scale up processing costs. Scale up of the 3% Pancreatin or 5% Papain processes was performed up to 2 L (37°C or 60°C respectively, 1 h incubation), and the digestion efficiency increased with the reaction volume as well as antioxidant activity (up to 60 gBSA eq/L and to 1.7 gAA eq/L). Retentate 1 digested fractions also showed, for the first time in dairy-based peptides, anti-tyrosinase activity, up to 0.14 gKA eq/L. Digested proteins were sub-fractionated by means of physical membrane separations and 30–10 kDa fraction from Papain treatment showed the highest antioxidant and anti-tyrosinase activities. The peptide sequence of the most bioactive fractions was achieved.