Human milk is recommended as the optimal nutrient source for infants and is associated with several short- and long-term benefits for child health. When accepting that human milk is the optimal nutrition for healthy term infants, it should be possible to calculate the nutritional needs of these infants from the intake of human milk. These data can then be used to design the optimal composition of infant formulas. In this review we show that the composition of human milk is rather variable and is dependent on factors such as beginning or end of feeding, duration of lactation, diet and body composition of the mother, maternal genes, and possibly infant factors such as sex. In particular, the composition of fatty acids in human milk is quite variable. It therefore seems questionable to estimate the nutritional needs of an infant exclusively from the intake of human milk. The optimal intake for infants must be based, at least in part, on other information-eg, balance or stable-isotope studies. The present recommendation that the composition of infant formulas should be based on the composition of human milk needs revision.

AbstractsOther managements were similar in all groups. Stool weight(g) and duration of diarrhea were the primary outcomes. Results There was a trend in stool weight reduction in the groups receiving L-isoleucine and the reduction was significant on day 2 (mean ± SD, L-isoleucine vs. vit D vs. L -isoleucine + vit D vs. control, 276±228 vs. 386±302 vs. 301± 181 vs. 447± 325, p=0.039) and day3 (176±157 vs. 321±273 vs. 276±169 vs. 341±292, p=0.045). The duration of diarrhea was similar in all groups. Conclusion L-isoleucine supplemented food reduces stool weight in children with acute diarrhea.

No abstract

Fluorescent Cell Barcoding (FCB) is a flow cytometric technique which has been used for assessing signaling proteins. This FCB technique has the potential to be applied in other multiparameter analyses. Since data on antigen (Ag)-specific T-cell immune responses, like intracellular cytokine production, are still lacking in infants because limited blood volumes can be obtained for analysis, the FCB technique could be very useful for this purpose. The objectives of this study were to modify the FCB method to be able to measure multiple Ag-specific cytokine reponses in T-cells upon simultaneous stimulation by various antigens and mitogens in small amounts of blood and to investigate the cytokine pattern of T-cell subsets in healthy infants aged six and twelve months. Blood samples, collected from 20 healthy infants aged six and twelve months, were stimulated in vitro with the antigens: phorbol-myristate-acetate (PMA), purified-protein-derivative (PPD), Tetanus-toxoid (TT), Staphylococcal-enterotoxin-B (SEB), and phytohemagglutinin (PHA). Each stimulus was barcoded by labelling with different intensities of fluorescent cell barcoding (FCB) markers. Intracellular production of interleukin-2, interferon-gamma, and tumor necrosis factor-alpha was measured simultaneously in just one blood sample of 600 µl whole blood. Significant age-related differences in cytokine production were shown for PMA, PHA, and TT in CD4+ T-cells, and for PMA, PHA, SEB, and TT in CD8+ T-cells. The intracellular cytokine production by CD4+ and CD8+ T-cells was higher at twelve months compared to six months of age for all antigens, except for PMA, which was lower at the age of twelve months. Based on the consistency in both T-cell subsets, we conclude that the new FCB method is a promising tool to investigate the age-related development of intracellular cytokine production in infants.

This is a follow up study of a multicenter randomised placebo-controlled trial in seven centres in five West European countries. The RCT assessed the effect of infant formula supplemented with a mixture of prebiotics (with neutral short-chain and long-chain oligosaccharides and pectin-derived acidic oligosaccharides) during infancy in term-born children (n=1130). In the follow-up study 672 children (60% of the study population) participated: 232 (56%) from the prebiotics group (PG), 243 (58%) from the control group (CG), and 197 (66%) from the non-randomised breast-fed group (BG). The primary outcome was the occurrence of febrile episodes at three to five years of age prospectively documented by the parents: in the PG 1.17 (interquartile range 0.50-2.08) episodes per year versus 1.20 (0.52-2.57) in the CG; and 1.48 (0.65-2.60) in the BG. This specific prebiotics mixture given during infancy in healthy non-atopic subjects does not decrease febrile episodes and therefore seems not to prevent infection between their third and fifth birthday.