TITLE:
Breast Milk Micronutrients in Lactating Mothers from Ribeirão Preto (SP), Brazil
AUTHORS:
Marco Túlio Soares Andrade, Luiz Antonio Del Ciampo, Ieda Regina Lopes Del Ciampo, Ivan Savioli Ferraz, Fernando Barbosa Junior
KEYWORDS:
Human Milk, Breastfeeding, Micronutrients, Micronutrients, ICP-MS
JOURNAL NAME:
Food and Nutrition Sciences,
Vol.5 No.13,
July
11,
2014
ABSTRACT: Breast
milk is the ideal food for infants and should be consumed as the exclusive food
for the first six months and then be complemented up to two years of age. The
aim of this study is to determine breast milk’s
content of macro and micronutrient in lactating mothers from the
Ribeir?o Preto (SP) region, in Brazil. A cross-sectional study was conducted
with breast milk samples of 70 mothers from the city of Ribeir?o Preto (SP). The
samples were analyzed in order to determine iron, copper, zinc, calcium and
magnesium concentrations. They were analyzed by Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass
Spectrometry (ICP-MS). The study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee
of the University Hospital, Faculty of Medicine of Ribeir?o Preto, University
of S?o Paulo, and all subjects gave written informed consent to participate.
The current study revealed that all 70 lactating mothers were healthy and
delivered babies more than 38 weeks gestation; 71.4% of them
were younger than 30 years and 47.1% were primiparae. The iron, copper, zinc,
calcium and magnesium concentrations detected in milk were 2.7 ± 0.4, 0.4 ± 0.02,
3.6 ± 0.2, 142 ± 21.6 and 39.8 ± 4.2 mg/L, respectively. Therefore, it can be
concluded that in the present sample, except for calcium, all other mineral
concentrations were adequate for the infant’s requirements according to the Dietary
Reference Intake (DRI).