Human Milk Oligosaccharide Profile Variation Throughout Postpartum in Healthy Women in a Brazilian Cohort

Abstract

Human milk oligosaccharide (HMO) composition varies throughout lactation and can be influenced by maternal characteristics. This study describes HMO variation up to three months postpartum and explores the influences of maternal sociodemographic and anthropometric characteristics in a Brazilian prospective cohort. We followed 101 subjects from 28–35 gestational weeks (baseline) and throughout lactation at 2–8 (visit 1), 28–50 (visit 2) and 88–119 days postpartum (visit 3). Milk samples were collected at visits 1, 2 and 3, and 19 HMOs were quantified usinghigh-performance liquid chromatography with fluorescence detection (HPLC-FL). Friedman post-hoc test, Spearman rank correlation for maternal characteristics and HMOs and non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) were used to define the HMO profile. Most women were secretors (89.1%) and presented high proportion of 2′-fucosyllactose (2′FL) at all three sample times, while lacto-N-tetraose (LNT, 2–8 days) and lacto-N-fucopentaose II (LNFPII, 28–50 and 88–119 days) were the most abundant HMOs in non-secretor women. Over the course of lactation, total HMO weight concentrations (g/L) decreased, but total HMO molar concentrations (mmol/L) increased, highlighting differential changes in HMO composition over time. In addition, maternal pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) and parity influence the HMO composition in healthy women in this Brazilian cohort.

Human Milk Oligosaccharide Concentrations and Infant Intakes Are Associated with Maternal Overweight and Obesity and Predict Infant Growth

“…However, the participants from the STEPS Study did not have obesity (median BMI = 23.0, [ 14 ]), which may explain the observed discrepancy between these two studies. Consistent with our observations, a positive association between pre-pregnancy BMI and LNnT concentrations at 2–8 days and at 88–119 days postpartum was recently reported in a Brazilian cohort that included women with overweight and obesity [ 11 ], suggesting that the relationship between BMI and LNnT concentrations might change when higher BMIs are included in the analysis. LNnT consumption can promote positive health benefits to the infant gut [ 27 ] and therefore identifying maternal predictors of LNnT concentrations may prove useful in future attempts to develop interventions for optimizing HM composition and infant nutrition.…”

“…Maternal genetics (expression patterns of Secretor (Se) and Lewis (Le) gene alleles, which code for different fucosyltransferases) have the greatest impact on HMO composition [ 26 ]. However, we and several others have concluded that various maternal characteristics (age, race, ethnicity, and parity) including pre-pregnancy BMI [ 10 , 11 , 17 ] and maternal glucose homeostasis [ 17 ] can affect HMO composition during lactation. To our knowledge, this study presented herein is one of the first to explore the relationship between maternal BMI and HMO composition in a large group of women whose BMIs encompassed Class I–Class III obesity.…”

“…Recent evidence suggests that there is an association between pre-pregnancy BMI and changes in HMO composition. For example, a low BMI has been shown to be negatively associated with HMO concentrations [ 7 ] and some studies have shown small, but significant correlations between BMI and/or obesity and HMO concentrations [ 10 , 11 , 12 ]. However, more research is needed to fully understand the potential impact of maternal BMI and body composition on HMO concentrations.…”

Human Milk Oligosaccharides and Hispanic Infant Weight Gain in the First 6 Months

“…Maternal reports indicated that 76.4% of infants received 7 or more human milk feedings per day, which falls within the recommended range of exclusive human milk feeding (29,30). HMO analysis revealed that 86.0% of mothers were classified as HMO secretors, which falls within the reported range of prior studies (i.e., 51.0%‐89.1%) (15,18,20,31). Characteristics of the mother‐infant pairs grouped by HMO secretor status at 1 month are described in Table 1.…”

In Love with Shaping You—Influential Factors on the Breast Milk Content of Human Milk Oligosaccharides and Their Decisive Roles for Neonatal Development

“…Obviously, the analysis of the absolute HMO content does not give detailed information about the change of individual HMOs with regard to different factors. To address such questions, a good number of studies have therefore focused on the quantification of the most important milk sugars [ 7 , 12 , 17 , 20 , 28 , 29 , 42 , 43 , 46 , 47 , 48 ]. These have for instance shown that 3FL increases up to almost threefold throughout the course of lactation regardless of the milk status and gestational age [ 7 , 12 , 17 , 28 , 29 , 32 , 43 , 47 , 48 ].…”