N4 Breast Milk and Infant Formula
Breast milk is the optimal food for young infants and is associated to improved neurodevelopment and reduced risk of infections. Still, a small proportion of infants (about 10% in Sweden) are not able to breast-feed and infant formula has been developed to cover the nutritional needs for these infants. Breast-milk contains a large number of bioactive components which are not present in infant formula.
An important aim for the N4 Research Group is to identify bioactive components that may be added to infant formula in order to achieve health outcomes similar to breast-fed infants. We have recently shown in the TUMME study that addition of milk fat globule membrane (MFGM) to infant formula improves cognitive development and reduces the risk of infections in infants. This is now further pursued in a follow-up study (TUMME UPP).
The ATLAS study is an international multicentre study aiming to characterize important bioactive components in breast milk (e.g. human milk oligosaccharides) and to investigate possible associations between maternal diet and breast milk composition.
N-FORTE is a randomized, controlled trial, where we are testing whether a human milk based fortifier (vs. a regular cow’s milk based fortifier) reduces the risk of NEC, sepsis and death in extremelty preterm infants.
GRANDIOSA is a randomized, controlled trial examining two new partially hydrolysed infant formulae and how they affect children's growth, neurological development, bowel function and allergies.
