I've heard Paula Meier talk about creamatocrits at a lactation conference I attended. In the NICU, premature babies often need higher calories than a term baby does. Having a higher caloric concentration allows the baby to get more calories in less volume (most can't tolerate the volumes they would need to receive the higher calories in normal expressed breast milk). Because of this caloric need, most milk is fortified with powdered formula or human milk fortifier. Paula's work with creamatocrits allow mothers to test their own milk and give their babies the part of their milk that contains more calories and lipids, thereby eliminating or reducing the need to use artificial or cow milk based fortifiers. I know I haven't really answered your questions, but I hope this helps a little. Some of us have seen over and over and over again that when human milk fortifier is added to expressed breast milk, many infants often develop bloody stools and signs of necrotizing enterocolitis. When these infants go back to plain breast milk, their bloody stools often stop altogether. But as soon as their milk is fortified again, the bloody stools start again. I don't know if there is actual research to back this up, but as nursery nurses, we see it happen all the time and it's difficult not to make a connection between the two. You can see more about creamatocrits here: http://www.nature.com/jp/journal/v22/n8/abs/7210825a.html http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1552-6909.2000.tb02046.x Christina Harris, RN Seattle, WA On 6/15/07, heather wrote: > > ...But human milk from human mothers? The creamatocrit is interesting > for use in research, perhaps, but I just don't understand its > application as a clinical tool *********************************************** Archives: http://community.lsoft.com/archives/LACTNET.html Mail all commands to [log in to unmask] To temporarily stop your subscription: set lactnet nomail To start it again: set lactnet mail (or [log in to unmask]) To unsubscribe: unsubscribe lactnet or ([log in to unmask]) To reach list owners: [log in to unmask]