The effect of Holder pasteurization on the lipid and metabolite composition of human milk

Solvent-Free Lipid Separation and Attenuated Total Reflectance Infrared Spectroscopy for Fast and Green Fatty Acid Profiling of Human Milk

“…This study relies on the use of pooled DHM as provided by regular donors enrolled at the hospital HM bank. Although this procedure allows for the study of samples that are similar to those administered at the hospital, the study protocol did not control for clinical variables possibly affecting the macronutrient composition of HM, such as postnatal age and gestational age (term or preterm delivery), or variables related to sample collection such as expression type, time after last feeding/expression, and time of the day [ 15 ].…”

“…These results agree well with most previous studies that investigated the effect of HoP on the relative HM FA profile reporting no significant difference [ 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ]. In a recent study based on direct derivatization of FAs from HM and subsequent GC-MS analysis, a small but significant decrease of certain absolute FA concentrations (particularly SAT, LCFA, MONO, PUFA) was found following HoP [ 15 ]. However, the design of this study involved the analysis of paired pre- and post-pasteurization DHM samples, which eliminates the biological background variation that might exist between donors and samples and therefore allows for a more sensitive evaluation of changes introduced during HoP.…”

“…For this purpose, the previously introduced Analytical GREEnness (AGREE) metric approach [ 27 ] was applied, representing a straight-forward assessment tool that considers the twelve principles of GAC (SIGNIFICANCE) [ 39 ]. To compare the environmental impact with conventional methods for HM FA determination, ATR-FTIR spectroscopy was juxtaposed with the applied GC-MS reference method and with a GC-MS method from the literature, where the fatty acids are derivatized directly from whole HM [ 15 ]. The results are shown in Figure 4 in the form of clock-like graphs comprising of twelve segments that represent the SIGNIFICANCE criteria.…”

“…The established method to destroy vegetative bacteria and viruses in DHM, thus ensuring safety for the infants, is called “Holder” pasteurization (HoP), where samples are heated to 62.5 °C for 30 min [ 13 ]. The effect of HoP on HM lipids is still a topic of discussion, as available studies report different results, ranging from no influence to a decrease of total fat content and certain FAs [ 14 , 15 ]. Consequently, reliable analytical methods for monitoring the FA profile of DHM are of major interest.…”

“…Established methods for determining the FA profile in HM are based on gas chromatography (GC) with different detectors such as flame ionization detectors (FID) or mass spectrometry (MS) [ 15 , 16 ]. These methods offer excellent sensitivity and accuracy, but bear severe drawbacks such as expensive instrumentation, time intensive chromatographic runs of approximately 1–2 h, and a labour-intensive derivatization step prior to analysis, typically involving hazardous chemicals.…”