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Comparative Study
. 2019 Mar;39(3):497-503.
doi: 10.1038/s41372-018-0291-8. Epub 2018 Dec 14.

Comparison of macronutrient content in human milk measured by mid-infrared human milk analyzer and reference methods

Francesca Giuffrida  1 , Sean Austin  2 , Denis Cuany  2 , Belén Sanchez-Bridge  2 , Karin Longet  2 , Emmanuelle Bertschy  2 , Julien Sauser  2 , Sagar K Thakkar  2 , Le Ye Lee  3   4 , Michael Affolter  2
Affiliations
Comparative Study

Comparison of macronutrient content in human milk measured by mid-infrared human milk analyzer and reference methods

Francesca Giuffrida et al. J Perinatol. 2019 Mar.

Abstract

Objective: The study aims at evaluating mid-infrared human milk analyzer (HMA) accuracy and precision, in human milk (HM).

Study design: Röse-Gottlieb, high-performance anion exchange chromatography-pulsed amperometric detection (HPAEC-PAD), Kjeldahl and amino acid analysis (AA) were selected as references for total fat, lactose and total protein determination.

Results: No significant difference was observed in lactose content between HMA and HPAEC-PAD. Significant differences were observed in fat and protein content between HMA and reference methods. However, the difference in fat content was lower than 12%, and therefore within the variability declared by supplier. For protein determination, the BCA protein assay was selected. No significant differences were observed in total protein content measured by BCA assay, Kjeldahl and AA methods.

Conclusions: HMA was reliable for the quantification of total fat and lactose content, but not for total protein one. The latter was measured by BCA assay, which yielded comparable results to Kjeldahl and AA methods.

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Conflict of interest statement

Nestlé Research funded the study. FG, SA, DC, BS-B, KL, EB, JS, SKT and MA are employees of Nestec. LYL received investigator fees for the conduct of this study; she does not have other conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Total fat content in fully expressed HM samples collected at 30, 60 and 120 days postpartum, analyzed by MIRIS HMA. Error bars represent standard deviation
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Total lactose content in fully expressed HM samples collected at 30, 60 and 120 days postpartum, analyzed by MIRIS HMA. Error bars represent standard deviation
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Total protein content in fully expressed HM samples collected at 30, 60 and 120 days postpartum, analyzed by MIRIS HMA and BCA assay. Circles represent BCA results and squares HMA results. Error bars represent standard deviation
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Correlation between total protein content in individual fully expressed HM samples collected at 30, 60 and 120 days postpartum, analyzed by MIRIS HMA and BCA assay
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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