Donor Milk: What's in It and What's Not

Abstract

Breastfeeding and human milk are widely recognized as optimal for human infants. However, if donor milk is used when mother's own milk is not available, some questions arise concerning the effects of storage, handling, and heat processing on the unique components of human milk. Holder pasteurization (62.5 degrees C for 30 minutes) of banked human milk is the method of choice to eliminate potential viral contaminants such as human immunodeficiency virus, human T-lymphoma virus, and cytomegalovirus, as well as tuberculosis and other bacterial contaminants, while maintaining the greatest possible complement of its unique bioactive factors. This article reviews some of the critical components of human milk and what is currently known about the effects of Holder pasteurization on their biological activity.

Pasteurization of human milk by a benchtop High-Temperature Short-Time device

“…Attention 358 was focused in particular on parameters that are significant from an immunological and/or 359 nutritional point-of-view, and which had previously been reported to be decreased by HoP 360 pasteurization (Tully et al, 2001). Both sIgAs and BSSL resulted to be significantly higher in the 361 milk pasteurized with the new HTST pasteurizer than in the milk treated with the standard HoP, 362 conducted according to the HMBs guidelines and using an HMB pasteurizer.…”

Bioactive peptides released from in vitro digestion of human milk with or without pasteurization

“…Recent studies have made it more evident that breast-feeding may reduce the risk of metabolic disease later in life (1)(2)(3). When the mother's own milk is limited for several reasons, donor HM is advocated over infant formulas as HM is superior to infant formula in terms of immunoprotection and gastrointestinal development (4). Donor HM is commonly pasteurized at 62.5 °C for 30 min with a holder (i.e., low-temperature long-time treatment) in order to avoid HM-transmitted bacterial and viral infections (4).…”

“…When the mother's own milk is limited for several reasons, donor HM is advocated over infant formulas as HM is superior to infant formula in terms of immunoprotection and gastrointestinal development (4). Donor HM is commonly pasteurized at 62.5 °C for 30 min with a holder (i.e., low-temperature long-time treatment) in order to avoid HM-transmitted bacterial and viral infections (4). Pasteurization is also applied to mother's own milk at some neonatal intensive care units for very low birth weight infants, who are highly vulnerable to cytomegalovirus in HM (5,6).…”

Les banques de lait humain

“…Le processus de pasteurisation n'altère pas de nombreux éléments nutritifs ou il n'en réduit le contenu que de manière minimale (37). Les glucides, les matières grasses et les sels demeurent inchangés.…”