Gee, the timing of this is just amazing isn't it? :(


Value of Banked Milk Over Formula for Premature Infants Questioned

 


By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Aug 04 - Pasteurized donor human milk as a 
substitute for mothers' own milk offers no short-term benefit over a 
commercial preterm formula for extremely premature infants, results of a 
randomized blinded study indicate.

"[Our] data question the use of pasteurized donor human milk obtained from 
milk banks, which is expensive, for this very high risk population," Dr. 
Richard J. Schanler, from North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, 
New York told Reuters Health.

Extremely premature infants have a very high rate of sepsis and 
necrotizing enterocolitis, Dr. Schanler and colleagues explain in the 
August issue of Pediatrics. The team had previously shown that these 
infants have lower rates of sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis when fed 
their own mother's milk.

However, mothers of extremely premature infants often have difficulty 
providing enough breast milk to meet the needs of the infants throughout 
their long hospitalization. "We reasoned that pasteurized donor human milk 
would be a good proxy if mothers' own milk was not available."

To investigate, they randomly assigned 243 infants born at less than 30 
weeks' gestation to pasteurized donor milk or preterm formula (Enfamil 
Premature Formula) if the supply of their own mothers' milk became 
insufficient during the study (birth to 90 days or until discharge).

"We found that extremely premature infants fed pasteurized donor human 
milk had the same incidence of sepsis and necrotizing enterocolitis as 
infants fed preterm formula, and both of these groups had more sepsis and 
necrotizing enterocolitis than infants fed their own mothers' milk," Dr. 
Schanler said. "We did not expect these results."

Pediatrics 2005;116:400-406.

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