Interrelationship of Calcium and Magnesium In the Mature Neonate

Serum Magnesium Levels in the Newborn and Older Child

“…The striking uniformity of values is not in agreement with the suggestions made by others that breast-fed infants show a higher (Anast, 1964;Gittleman, Pinkus, and Schmertzler, 1964) or lower (Di Cagno, Balocco, and Castello, 1963) Mg++ level in the serum. Ideally, such studies should be accompanied by information about haematocrit levels to allow for variations in hydration of the infants.…”

Plasma Calcium and Magnesium in Newborn Babies

“…Cow's milk is known to produce lower calcium levels (Graham et al, 1953;Oppe and Redstone, 1968), as does vitamin D (Gittleman et al, 1964). However, there has been no real agreement on the actual level of calcium; our figures are lower than most of those reported, though Spivek (1956) had a group of 31 babies with a mean serum calcium of 7.4 mg./100 ml.…”

“…The pattern of the plasma calcium values during the neonatal period-a fall in the first 48 hours, a rise, and then another fall at the end of the first week-has been reported by other authors (Todd, Chuinard, and Wood, 1939;Graham, Barness, and Gyorgy 1953;Gittleman, Pincus, and Schmertzler, 1964;Acharya and Payne, 1965). Cow's milk is known to produce lower calcium levels (Graham et al, 1953;Oppe and Redstone, 1968), as does vitamin D (Gittleman et al, 1964).…”

Neonatal convulsions associated with primary disturbance of calcium, phosphorus, and magnesium metabolism.

“…The phosphorus/ calcium ratio in the former is 0.8/1 (compared with 0 2/1 in human milk) and the phosphorus/ magnesium ratio 7*5/1 (compared with 1 9/1) ( Table III). The hypocalcaemic effect of the disproportionately high phosphorus content of cow's milk may be mediated through transitory hypoparathyroidism in the infant (Fanconi and Prader, 1967), calcium or vitamin D deficiency in the mother (Watney et al, 1971), vitamin D administration to the infant (Gittleman, Pinkus, and Schmerztler, 1964), or lack of vitamin D in the infant (Barr and Forfar, 1969). Hypomagnesaemia may also result from the disproportionate phosphorus load of cow's milk (Anast, 1964;Coussons, 1969) and factors which mayfurther mediate hypomagnesaemia 106 mt-nn are magnesium deficiency in the mother, a transitory functional hypoparathyroidism (Davis, Harvey, and Yu, 1965) impaired absorption (Paunier et al, 1965;Salet et al, 1966), and target unresponsiveness (Seelig, 1971).…”