Breast Milk Stem Cell Survival in Neonate's Gut, Entery into Neonate Circulation and Adaption by the Body

Human Breast Milk: From Food to Active Immune Response With Disease Protection in Infants and Mothers

Breastfeeding is associated with long-term wellbeing including low risks of infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases such as asthma, cancer, autoimmune diseases and obesity during childhood. In recent years, important advances have been made in understanding the human breast milk (HBM) composition. Breast milk components such as, non-immune and immune cells and bioactive molecules, namely, cytokines/chemokines, lipids, hormones, and enzymes reportedly play many roles in breastfed newborns and in mothers, by diseases protection and shaping the immune system of the newborn. Bioactive components in HBM are also involved in tolerance and appropriate inflammatory response of breastfed infants if necessary. This review summarizes the current literature on the relationship between mother and her infant through breast milk with regard to disease protection. We will shed some light on the mechanisms underlying the roles of breast milk components in the maintenance of health of both child and mother.

Potential Benefits of Bovine Colostrum in Pediatric Nutrition and Health

Bovine colostrum (BC), the first milk produced from cows after parturition, is increasingly used as a nutritional supplement to promote gut function and health in other species, including humans. The high levels of whey and casein proteins, immunoglobulins (Igs), and other milk bioactives in BC are adapted to meet the needs of newborn calves. However, BC supplementation may improve health outcomes across other species, especially when immune and gut functions are immature in early life. We provide a review of BC composition and its effects in infants and children in health and selected diseases (diarrhea, infection, growth-failure, preterm birth, necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), short-bowel syndrome, and mucositis). Human trials and animal studies (mainly in piglets) are reviewed to assess the scientific evidence of whether BC is a safe and effective antimicrobial and immunomodulatory nutritional supplement that reduces clinical complications related to preterm birth, infections, and gut disorders. Studies in infants and animals suggest that BC should be supplemented at an optimal age, time, and level to be both safe and effective. Exclusive BC feeding is not recommended for infants because of nutritional imbalances relative to human milk. On the other hand, adverse effects, including allergies and intolerance, appear unlikely when BC is provided as a supplement within normal nutrition guidelines for infants and children. Larger clinical trials in infant populations are needed to provide more evidence of health benefits when patients are supplemented with BC in addition to human milk or formula. Igs and other bioactive factors in BC may work in synergy, making it critical to preserve bioactivity with gentle processing and pasteurization methods. BC has the potential to become a safe and effective nutritional supplement for several pediatric subpopulations.

The Gut‒Breast Axis: Programming Health for Life

The gut is a pivotal organ in health and disease. The events that take place in the gut during early life contribute to the programming, shaping and tuning of distant organs, having lifelong consequences. In this context, the maternal gut plays a quintessence in programming the mammary gland to face the nutritional, microbiological, immunological, and neuroendocrine requirements of the growing infant. Subsequently, human colostrum and milk provides the infant with an impressive array of nutrients and bioactive components, including microbes, immune cells, and stem cells. Therefore, the axis linking the maternal gut, the breast, and the infant gut seems crucial for a correct infant growth and development. The aim of this article is not to perform a systematic review of the human milk components but to provide an insight of their extremely complex interactions, which render human milk a unique functional food and explain why this biological fluid still truly remains as a scientific enigma.

The Revolution of Breast Milk: The Multiple Role of Human Milk Banking between Evidence and Experience-A Narrative Review

The review recalls the importance of breast milk and deepens the theme of human milk banking, a virtuous reality that is expanding all over the world but is still little known. In the last 15 years, modern biological technologies have crystallized the concept of uniqueness and irreproducibility of human milk, by establishing three new principles: first: human milk: a "life-saving" drug; second: human milk: the best food for preterm infants; and third: human milk: the main component of premature infant care. Our experience teaches us that human milk banking plays many roles that need to be known and shared.

How could metabolomics change pediatric health?

In the last years, 'omics' technologies, and especially metabolomics, emerged as expanding scientific disciplines and promising technologies in the characterization of several pathophysiological processes.In detail, metabolomics, able to detect in a dynamic way the whole set of molecules of low molecular weight in cells, tissues, organs, and biological fluids, can provide a detailed phenotypic portray, representing a metabolic "snapshot."Thanks to its numerous strength points, metabolomics could become a fundamental tool in human health, allowing the exact evaluation of individual metabolic responses to pathophysiological stimuli including drugs, environmental changes, lifestyle, a great number of diseases and other epigenetics factors.Moreover, if current metabolomics data will be confirmed on larger samples, such technology could become useful in the early diagnosis of diseases, maybe even before the clinical onset, allowing a clinical monitoring of disease progression and helping in performing the best therapeutic approach, potentially predicting the therapy response and avoiding overtreatments. Moreover, the application of metabolomics in nutrition could provide significant information on the best nutrition regimen, optimal infantile growth and even in the characterization and improvement of commercial products' composition.These are only some of the fields in which metabolomics was applied, in the perspective of a precision-based, personalized care of human health.In this review, we discuss the available literature on such topic and provide some evidence regarding clinical application of metabolomics in heart diseases, auditory disturbance, nephrouropathies, adult and pediatric cancer, obstetrics, perinatal conditions like asphyxia, neonatal nutrition, neonatal sepsis and even some neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism.Our research group has been interested in metabolomics since several years, performing a wide spectrum of experimental and clinical studies, including the first metabolomics analysis of human breast milk. In the future, it is reasonable to predict that the current knowledge could be applied in daily clinical practice, and that sensible metabolomics biomarkers could be easily detected through cheap and accurate sticks, evaluating biofluids at the patient's bed, improving diagnosis, management and prognosis of sick patients and allowing a personalized medicine. A dream? May be I am a dreamer, but I am not the only one.