The effects of the dietary intakes of copper, iron, manganese, and zinc on the trace element content of human milk

Abstract

Fifteeen breast-feeding mothers who volunteered for a study of trace elements in human milk, kept two 7-day food records during the course of lactation. The 1st survey week ranged from 6 to 8 weeks and the 2nd survey week from 17 to 22 weeks postpartum. The milk samples submitted for analysis represented a sample of every feed during a period of 24 hr and contained foremilk and hindmilk in equal proportions. The 7-day food records were handled by a computing system to give an average daily food consumption and nutrient intake, but iron was the only trace element given by the system. In order to estimate the trace element intakes of the mothers, mixtures were prepared to represent the average daily food consumption. The trace element concentrations of the mixtures and milk samples were analyzed using the atomic absorption spectrophotometric method. The estimated average daily copper intake was 1.8 mg, the iron intake 16 mg, the manganese intake 5 mg, and the zinc intake 13 mg. The mean copper, iron, manganese, and zinc concentrations of the milk samples were 0.36 +/- 0.07 mg/liter, 0.40 +/- 0.10 mg/liter, 4.5 +/- 1.8 microgram/liter, and 1.89 +/- 0.74 mg/liter for the 1st survey week and 0.21 +/- 0.07 mg/liter, 0.29 +/- 0.09 mg/liter, 4.0 +/- 1.5 microgram/liter, and 0.72 +/- 0.44 mg/liter for the 2nd survey week. A significant positive correlation (P less than 0.01) was observed in the 2nd survey week between maternal manganese intake and the manganese content of human milk. The intake of copper, iron, and zinc, at the present level of intake, did not seem to affect the corresponding trace element levels in human milk.

Maternal – neonatal serum selenium and copper levels in Greeks and Albanians

“…About 75 mg of elemental Cu is needed daily to meet the requirements of pregnancy and the calculated daily Cu accumulation by a fetus is 51 mg/kg body weight/24 h and at term (Gathwala and Vadav, 2002). So, the relatively low serum Cu concentrations, which were evaluated in the Albanian mothers, in whom Cu intake was very poor, as indicated from their dietetic diaries, could be responsible for the low Cu concentrations of their infants (Vuori et al, 1980;Agget, 1994;Thomas, 2001). Albanian immigrant mothers live under difficult low socioeconomic conditions.…”

Zinc levels in maternal milk: the influence of nutritional status with respect to zinc during the third trimester of pregnancy

“…Several authors have indicated that maternal dietary zinc intake does not in¯uence concentrations in milk (Feeley et al, 1983;Vuori et al, 1980). However, in many studies involving supplementation of the diet, a large number of women abandoned the project before ®nishing the supplementation period.…”

Zinc and copper contents in breast milk of japanese women.

“…In the present study, 3 of 64 cases had the levels of hair zinc content below 100 µg/ g which will be implicated as zinc deficiency (Committee on Nutrition 1978), and the milk zinc levels in these cases were the lowest levels of the tested samples. It was shown that the amount of daily zinc intake did not affect the zinc content of breast milk (Karmarkar and Ramakrishman 1960;Vuori et al 1980), while in animal experiments, milk zinc content can be raised by increasing the zinc intake (Underwood 1971a, b). Thus, supplementation of zinc to maternal diet seemed to be useful in lactating women, especially in cases with zinc deficiency.…”