Field Study - Copenhagen: the Mothers Infants and Lactation Quality (MILQ) Project

Breast milk is recommended as the sole source of nutrients for infants during the first 180 days postpartum and as an important source for the next 200 days, but we lack valid information on the nutrient content of human milk, and especially on its micronutrient (MN) content, and there are no Reference Values (RVs).

Consequently we are basing recommended nutrient intakes of infants, young children and lactating women on many unvalidated and incorrect estimates of milk MN concentrations and have no benchmarks against which to evaluate breast milk quality in different populations, or the need for or effects of nutrient interventions on breast milk micronutrients.

The limited existing evidence suggests that many vitamins and some minerals may be low in the milk of undernourished women.

The overall objective of this research is to develop RVs for micronutrients in human milk, based on the range of nutrient concentrations in samples that we will obtain from well-nourished but unsupplemented lactating women in four countries.

Maternal plasma will also be collected to verify the adequacy of maternal micronutrient status and to describe the relationships between maternal status and milk micronutrient concentrations. Infant plasma will be analyzed to determine the effects of breast milk micronutrient concentrations on infant status.

These objectives will be facilitated by our recent validation of methods for milk micronutrient analysis, and our ability to measure several vitamins simultaneously by mass spectrometry.