Researchers at UNC-Greensboro are studying what鈥檚 in donor milk to help premature infants. Donor milk is breast milk from humans that鈥檚 then collected by milk banks and distributed to those in need.
More than 10% of the babies in North Carolina are born premature, . Breast milk helps protect premature babies鈥� guts and assists with their growth.
If they are fed formula instead of breast milk, they are put at risk for a disease called , which destroys the lining of their intestinal walls. The team collected breast milk samples from 600 women. The women were approved donors from a variety of low, middle, and high income settings. The research team also worked with four milk banks in the U.S. and four international milk banks.
鈥淪o, what we saw in our initial analysis is, especially in the micronutrients, there can be a five or 10 fold variation between women,鈥� said Maryanne Perrin, an associate professor and lead researcher on the project. 鈥淪o we're going to try to help milk banks understand a better way to mix and pool the milk.鈥�
Perrin said her team has also found that milk changes over time, and donor milk varies from milk directly from the mother.
鈥淔irst of all, a baby's mother who gave birth preterm, she's literally days after giving birth, and we know that milk is going to look different than what we've seen in my study is, at least for the U.S., most milk bank donors gave birth three or four months ago, and so their milk looks different,鈥� she said.
Perrin said another big difference is that donor milk is pasteurized, which doesn't equate to a biological mother's milk.
鈥淪o, mother's milk is best,鈥� she said. 鈥淚t's full of all these bioactive components and donor milk is second best.
The next steps for this project are to continue analyzing the data they have and publish their findings later this year. It was funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) for about $1.4 million over three years.
