Study finds premature infants benefit from exclusive human milk-based diet

February 16, 2016

111914NEC640A recent Baylor College of Medicine study led by Texas Children’s neonatologist Dr. Amy Hair, and published in the journal Breastfeeding Medicine, found that premature infants weighing less than 1,250 grams at birth showed improved outcomes after being fed a human milk-based diet.

Texas Children’s and Baylor researchers compared outcomes data of more than 1,500 premature infants in four large centers in the U.S. two years before and two years after implementing an exclusive human milk-based diet in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). They found that babies who were exclusively fed human breast milk had a lower incidence of mortality, late-onset sepsis, retinopathy of prematurity (which can lead to blindness) and bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a form of chronic lung disease in infants.

Hair, who is also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Baylor and director of the Neonatal Nutrition Program at Texas Children’s, says feeding premature infants an exclusive human milk-based diet has also been shown to decrease the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), a life-threatening neonatal condition that causes inflammation and death of intestinal tissue.

“Since implementing an exclusive human milk feeding protocol for newborns weighing less than 1,500 grams at birth, not only have we reduced the rate of NEC by 77 percent in our NICU, but we have seen additional benefits with this diet,” Hair said.

An exclusive human milk-based diet consists of a mother’s own milk supplemented with donor human milk and fortifier derived from donor human milk. Babies do not receive any bovine protein as formula or fortifiers. Prior to implementing a human milk feeding protocol, infants were fed mother’s own milk with bovine fortifier or formula.

“We know that human milk has immune factors, antibodies, high levels of important fat and vitamins, so it makes sense that it would work with different processes in the body to improve the overall health in babies,” Hair said.

Click here to read the journal article highlighting their study, which was funded by Texas Children’s Hospital’s Bad Pants Day golf tournament.