Human milk compositional fingerprint: Associations between metabolic hormone concentrations, maternal-infant characteristics and infant growth

Abstract

Background: The incidence of obesity and related cardiometabolic disorders has become a major health issue worldwide. The nutritional environment during early life has been identified as a key developmental window that can impact on the risk for developing health disorders across the lifecourse. Human milk (HM) is undoubtedly the ideal nourishment for infants. However, while this highly personalised source of nutrition represents one of the reasons for our evolutionary success, we are far from having fully understood its complexity, the possible effects that modern lifestyles and environments have on its composition and the impact that compositional alteration may have on postnatal outcomes and ultimately on population health...