Complex breastmilk sugars across pregnancies

How does a woman’s breastmilk change from one pregnancy to the next?

When it comes to the complex sugars (human oligosaccharides, or HMOs), the profile stays remarkable consistent, says a group of researchers from the Human Milk Institute (HMI) at University of California San Diego.

“We discovered that HMO profiles largely follow a highly personalized and predictable trajectory following different pregnancies irrespective of non-genetic influences,” write the study’s authors.

Their first-time research findings are important because they indicate what influences HMO composition in a woman’s breastmilk – maternal genetics generally and sugar enzymes specifically. Their study was just published in the MDPI journal Nutrients (Consistency and Variability of the Human Milk Oligosaccharide Profile in Repeat Pregnancies). Read the details here.

 We are grateful for the research collaboration that took place between the Larsson-Rosenquist Foundation Mother-Milk-Infant Center of Research Excellence and Mommy’s Milk Human Milk Research Biorepository – both at the HMI.

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