Prenatal supplements may impact breast milk microbiome
Prenatal supplementation was associated with microbial diversity in breast milk, according to findings presented at the American Society of Nutrition’s annual meeting.
“Breast feeding is the optimal form of infant nutrition, with innumerable health benefits for the mother and child,” Rana F. Chehab, RD, MPH, a research candidate at Purdue University, said during a presentation at Nutrition Live Online 2021. “What’s so special about breast feeding? It probably is the composition of the milk.”
The origin of bacteria in breast milk has been debated, according to Chehab. Potential sources include the mother’s gut microbiome, breast microbiota, the infant’s mouth and mother’s skin, and sources of contamination, such as a breast pump.
To learn more about the composition of breast milk, Chehab and colleagues conducted a multicenter, longitudinal prospective birth cohort study of 771 women (mean age, 33 years; 57% nulliparous) who were enrolled in the CHILD cohort study in Canada. Participants completed questionnaires about their dietary and supplement intake and provided milk samples. The dietary patterns among the study population were plant-based, Western and balanced diets, according to the researchers. Among the participants, 88% took multivitamins, 18% took fish oil and 4% took vitamin C at some point during their pregnancies.
The researchers reported that prenatal supplements, but not dietary patterns, were linked to breast milk composition. Vitamin C supplements were associated with higher alpha diversity and higher Veillonella abundance, but lower Stenotrophomonas abundance (P < .05). The higher relative abundance of Veillonella remained associated with vitamin C supplements after adjusting for covariates, according to the researchers. They also found that fish oil supplements were associated with lower alpha diversity (P < .05).
“We found that the intake of specific prenatal individual supplements, namely vitamin C, modulates the breast milk microbiota composition,” Chehab said. “Future analysis is needed to examine additional associations between maternal intake and the breast milk microbiome as well as the infant gut microbiome and health, and to replicate these findings in different cohorts in geographic locations other than Canada.”