Copper deficiency in infants fed cow milk

Mineral Concentrations in Cow's Milk from the Canary Island

“…One can deduce that cow's milk is an excellent source for Ca and for K. So, the Canarian mean consumption of 300 mL of cow's milk supplies 62.0% (raw cow's milk) and 49.1% (sterilized cow's milk) of the RDA requirements for Ca and 21.3% in both cow's milk of that requirement for K. Also, cow's milk supplies moderate amounts of Na and Mg and smaller amounts of Zn and Se. However, the contribution of Fe or Cu for both types of milk to the RDA values was very low (Table 3), con"rming that cow's milk is a very poor source of these elements (Levy et al, 1985;Naveh et al, 1981). The latter results are in good agreement with results obtained by Pennington et al (1987Pennington et al ( , 1995a of the contribution to the mineral recommended intakes for #uid whole milk sample from U.S.A.…”

Copper Deficiency in Infancy

“…Nine further patients had fractures that were only recognised when radiology was carried out for other reasons. Joint laxity was noted in two children [26,35]. One patient had craniotabes [1] and one a rickets-like rosary [35].…”

“…There are very few reports of copper deficiency in older children and adults [45][46][47]. Figure 1 shows the ages of 42 children at the time of the first symptom that could reasonably be ascribed to copper deficiency; three studies [26,33,34] were excluded from this analysis since the ages at the time of the earliest symptoms were not reported. In many patients with copper deficiency, the first symptom was at birth or during the first six months of life.…”

“…A few patients [17,24,26] had been fed mainly on cow's milk, which contains slightly less copper than human milk [57] and this may have been a contributory factor. Only four patients were breast-fed [27,28], and two of the infants reported by Sutton et al [1] received naso jejunal feeding with expressed breast milk during the period in which the copper deficiency was probably developing.…”

About Copper Deficiency

“…Copper deficiency is seen relatively more often in infants, in addition to other conditions described in the introduction of the authors' article [2], In infants hypocupremia usually goes together with hypoferremia, hypoproteinemia (hypoalbuminemia), osteoporosis, long bone changes, hypotonia, depigmentation of the skin and hair [3,4]. Familial benign copper deficiency has also been reported [5].…”