Fatty Acid Composition of Human Milk and Infant Milk Formulas

Overview

The purpose of this study was to obtain information about fatty acid composition in human milk and compareit with infant milk formulas using high-resolution gas chromatography. In 24-h samples of mature hindmilk of 12Slovak women, who delivered at term, 48 different fatty acids were separated and quantified. The fatty acidcomposition of human milk was as follows: saturated 39.90 %; cis-monounsaturated 38.35 %; trans-monounsa-turated 3.73 %; polyunsaturated 18.02%.The polyunsaturated fatty acid fraction included 7 long-chain polyun-saturated fatty acids (LC-PUFA) which represented 1.72 % (LC-PUFA; n6 contributed 1.21 %; LC-PUFA n30.51 %). The mean total trans fatty acid content was 4.28 ± 1.48 % of the total milk fatty acids and ranged from2.41 to 8.28 %. The trans fatty acid isomer content of human milk was variable, reflecting the trans fatty acidcontent of the mother’s diet. Commercially available infant milk formulas in Slovakia were without LC-PUFAand contained only from 0.67 to 0.96 % of total fatty acids as trans fatty acid isomers.

Key words:
mature human milk, infant formulas, polyunsaturated fatty acids, n3 fatty acids, n6 fatty acids,trans fatty acids