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 *************************************** Denise Fisher Health e-Learning http://www.health-e-learning.com [log in to unmask] **************************************** *********************************************** 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(R) mailer for lightning fast mail delivery. For more information, go to: http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html