Sex Hormones, Gonadotropins, and Sex Hormone-binding Globulin in Infants Fed Breast Milk, Cow Milk Formula, or Soy Formula

Abstract

Measurement of endogenous hormones in early life is important to investigate the effects of hormonally active environmental compounds. To assess the possible hormonal effects of different feeding regimens in different sample matrices of infants, 166 infants were enrolled from two U.S hospitals between 2006 and 2009. The children were classified into exclusive soy formula, cow milk formula or breast milk regimens. Urine, saliva and blood samples were collected over the first 12 months of life. Estradiol, estrone, testosterone, luteinizing hormone (LH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and sex hormone-binding globulin (SHBG) levels were measured in the three matrices. Lower estradiol and LH levels were found in urine and saliva samples of soy formula-fed boys compared to cow formula-fed boys. Higher LH level was found in urine samples of soy formula-fed girls compared to cow formula-fed girls. However, we found neither a neonatal testosterone rise in the boys nor a gender-specific difference in testosterone levels, which suggests that urinary testosterone levels may not accurately reflect blood levels during mini-puberty. Nevertheless, our study shows that blood, urine and saliva samples are readily collectible and suitable for multi-hormone analyses in children and allow examination of hypotheses concerning endocrine effects from dietary compounds.

Associations Between Hormonal Biomarkers and Preterm Infant Health and Development During the First 2 Years After Birth

“…This study’s results supported our hypothesis that testosterone would a better predictive hormonal biomarker for physical growth and socioemotional development among VLBW infants than cortisol. Elevated testosterone levels, which were higher than those in other studies (Contreras et al, 2017; Fang et al, 2017), were longitudinally associated with physical growth delays over the 2 years of life. Such findings might have occurred because elevated testosterone levels were found to be related to preterm and low birthweight births in both human and animal studies (Cho et al, 2012; Quinn et al, 2014).…”

“…We examined both steroid hormones as potential biomarkers in this study. Since protein-unbound testosterone and cortisol are physiologically relevant to the human species and these steroids in saliva are largely free but strongly correlated with total steroid levels (protein-bound testosterone and cortisol) in the blood (r = 0.67–0.95; Fang et al, 2017; Gunnala et al, 2015), we measured the two steroid hormones in saliva.…”

Aging in psoriasis vulgaris: female patients are epigenetically older than healthy controls

“…It appears that there must be sex-specific metabolic pathways that are altered by psoriasis because only women with psoriasis were epigenetically older than healthy controls. It seems that there is sex specificity in terms of blood composition [ 32 ], the immune system [ 33 ], hormones, lifestyle [ 34 ], the microbiome [ 35 ] and many others.…”

Breast Milk for Term and Preterm Infants—Own Mother’s Milk or Donor Milk?

“…Previous studies have investigated the role of infant nutrition on plasma FSH and LH levels. Fang and colleagues showed higher FSH and lower LH levels in boys receiving breast milk compared to cow or soy formula [ 40 ]. Breast milk is an important carrier of pituitary hormones compared to infant formulas, which lack pituitary hormones.…”