The major formula companies produce human milk fortifier. This is usually a 
powder with high protein and mineral content, which is made from cows milk 
and then added to human milk to fortify it. Many studies have shown that 
babies born very, very preterm require more of various nutritional 
components than their mother's own milk provides.

In Perth, Western Australia, in the Hartmann lab, researcher Ching Tat Lai 
is developing a human milk fortifier made out of human milk. Now this is 
very exciting :-) As a part of this study they looked at what nutritional 
components are actually in each mother's breastmilk and found a wide 
variation in just about every component. Therefore at the moment, when a 
neonatologist wants a baby to have a certain amount of say, protein, they 
have to assume that all mothers have the 'average' protein content in their 
breastmilk and they add cows-milk-based fortifier to that assuming that the 
baby will get what they want it to have.
This is pretty hit and miss when you see Ching's figures.

Ching and co are working on a quick, easy method to test mother's milk for 
what her milk does actually contain and then being able to add exactly what 
is needed to her milk from a fortifier made of human milk.

At the New Zealand Lactation Consultant's conference earlier this month he 
reported that they have trialled this with a mother and her preterm baby 
and the results were fine. The mother had an abundance of breastmilk, so 
they were able to fortify her own breastmilk with measured amounts of 
protein and minerals made from her own breastmilk. The process to produce 
this concentrate is involved, but the idea is to get it to the stage where 
it will become standard for NICUs, and that looks like a distinct possibility.
They are calling the human-milk-based human milk fortifier, Boost.

More power to them, I say. :-)
Denise

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Denise Fisher
Health e-Learning
http://www.health-e-learning.com
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