Breast milk leptin and adiponectin in relation to infant body composition up to 2 years

Abstract

Our results suggest that higher adiponectin levels in breast milk might be associated with greater weight gain and higher fat mass in the offspring up to 2 years.

Accretion of Fat-Free Mass Rather Than Fat Mass in Infancy Is Positively Associated with Linear Growth in Childhood

“…Another study by Savastano et al (39) showed that subcutaneous body fat helps in insulating the body. Postnatal FM gain could be stimulated by breast-milk adiponectin and n-3 long-chain PUFAs, as supported by other studies (32,40). This FM gain could mediate the association of breast-milk FA and adiponectin concentrations with linear growth.…”

“…In this regard, Butte et al (31) suggested that FFM accretion during infancy is lower in exclusively breastfed infants than in formula-fed (solid food, beverage, and formula milk) infants. Correspondingly, Brunner et al (32) showed that FFM at age 4 mo was lower in children who were fed high concentrations of human-milk leptin. However, nearly one-third of the children included in this study were exclusively breastfed (neither water nor food added) at age 2.5 mo.…”

Associations between Maternal Body Composition and Appetite Hormones and Macronutrients in Human Milk

“…Results associating maternal BMI and adiponectin concentrations in HM are conflicting [25], with several studies showing no associations [11,31,32] and two studies counter-intuitively reporting a positive association [33,34]. As with leptin, use of BMI as a measure of maternal adiposity may contribute to these conflicting findings.…”

Growth and Life Course Health Development

“…Breast milk contains growth signaling compounds, ranging from leptin to inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-6, with effects on skeletal, fat, and lean mass accrual. Increasing breast milk leptin levels have been associated with lower infant weight gain through the sixth postnatal month (Schuster et al 2011) and increasing IL-6 levels with lower infant weight-for-length Z-score and fat mass at 1 month of age (Fields and Demerath 2012), effects that attenuate at later ages (Brunner et al 2015). The leptin and IL-6 effects on weight gain and fat mass accrual may reflect influences on appetite and/or digestive processes via gastrointestinal epithelial cell receptors (Savino et al 2009), or changing patterns of adipocyte cell size and/or differentiation potential (Morrison and Farmer 2000).…”