I been looking at some info about storage and administration of expressed breastmilk. The references I've seen show that vitamin A, C and riboflavin are quite subseptable to photodegradation. I was wondering whether and what precautions those of you working with sick / premature infants take to reduce degredation of these vitamins? I'm talking about fresh expressed milk, not pasteurised banked milk - gee, wish I was, but The Netherlands is certainly not geared up to milk banking - good heavens, what a thought! Sara Bernard The Netherlands ps here are the refs I've been looking at: Arch Dis Child 1987 Feb;62(2):161-5 Human milk vitamin content after pasteurisation, storage, or tube feeding. Van Zoeren-Grobben D, Schrijver J, Van den Berg H, Berger HM. "Tube feeding significantly lowered the concentrations of vitamins C (44%) and B6 (19%), and exposure to phototherapy seemed to lower the vitamin C concentration (53%) further. Low birthweight infants have increased vitamin requirements. Vitamin losses in expressed human milk before or during feeding may increase the incidence of vitamin deficiencies in these babies." Acta Paediatr Scand 1985 Jan;74(1):40-4 Susceptibility of riboflavin and vitamin A in breast milk to photodegradation and its implications for the use of banked breast milk in infant feeding. Bates CJ, Liu DS, Fuller NJ, Lucas A. Up to 50% of the riboflavin and up to 70% of the vitamin A in human drip breast milk samples were destroyed during controlled exposure to daylight, either in translucent polythene bottles, or where the milk was pumped through naso-gastric tubing from a syringe to mimic the conditions of enteral feeding. *********************************************** To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or digest) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet All commands go to [log in to unmask] The LACTNET mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned LISTSERV(R) list management software together with L-Soft's LSMTP(TM) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html