Acrylamide Content in Breast Milk: The Evaluation of the Impact of Breastfeeding Women’s Diet and the Estimation of the Exposure of Breastfed Infants to Acrylamide in Breast Milk

Abstract

Acrylamide in food is formed by the Maillard reaction. Numerous studies have shown that acrylamide is a neurotoxic and carcinogenic compound. The aim of this study was to determine the level of acrylamide in breast milk at different lactation stages and to evaluate the impact of breastfeeding women’s diet on the content of this compound in breast milk. The acrylamide level in breast milk samples was determined by LC–MS/MS. Breastfeeding women’s diet was evaluated based on the 24 h dietary recall. The median acrylamide level in colostrum (n = 47) was significantly (p < 0.0005) lower than in the mature milk (n = 26)—0.05 µg/L and 0.14 µg/L, respectively. The estimated breastfeeding women’s acrylamide intake from the hospital diet was significantly (p < 0.0001) lower than that from the home diet. We found positive—although modest and borderline significant—correlation between acrylamide intake by breastfeeding women from the hospital diet µg/day) and acrylamide level in the colostrum (µg/L). Acrylamide has been detected in human milk samples, and a positive correlation between dietary acrylamide intake by breastfeeding women and its content in breast milk was observed, which suggests that the concentration can be reduced. Breastfeeding women should avoid foods that may be a source of acrylamide in their diet.

Acrylamide in human breast milk - the current state of knowledge

“…It depends on their individual needs. All these factors could influence the variability of the acrylamide content in individual breast milk samples, which was clearly shown in the studies carried out in Poland [35]. It seems that more research is needed on the acrylamide content of human milk using standardized human milk sampling protocols.…”

“…So far there have been published three studies on the acrylamide content in human milk [33,34,35]. The first results was published by Sörgel et al [33] already in 2002.…”

“…In recently published study carried out in Poland [35] the results of determination of acrylamide content in human breast milk, in two lactation periods, were presented. As in the studies by Sörgel et al [33] and Fohgelberg et al [34] acrylamide content was determined by liquid chromatography coupled with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS).…”

“…This has been well demonstrated by Sörgel et al [33], who took milk samples 3, 4 and 8 hours after eating foods high in acrylamide and found high levels of acrylamide in breast milk. In turn, in our research [35], milk samples were collected in the morning after the babies were first fed. Probably even before the first meal of the breastfeeding mothers.…”

“…They estimated that the mean acrylamide intake during the first six months for children who were exclusively breastfed was 0.04 μg/kg bw/day. Exposure to acrylamide in the group of Polish exclusively breastfed infants was estimated in two different lactation period based on a similar approach [35]. For the calculations, we used the actually determined values of acrylamide in breast milk for samples above the LOQ (0.1 µg/L) and half the LOQ value (0.05 µg/L) for samples below this value.…”