BIOMILQ, Inc., Research Triangle Park, NC, USA.
Sci Rep. 2024 Sep 6;14(1):20827. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-71677-9.
Understanding the human milk metabolome can help inform infant nutrition and health. Untargeted metabolomics was used to study breast milk from 31 healthy participants to assess the shared metabolites in milk from participants with various backgrounds and understand how different demographic, health, and environmental factors impact the milk metabolome. Breast milk samples were analyzed by four separate UPLC-MS/MS methods. Metabolite Set Enrichment Analysis was used to study the most and least variable metabolites. The associations between participant factors and the metabolome were assessed with redundancy analyses. Among all 31 participants and between each untargeted UPLC-MS/MS method, 731 metabolites were detected, of which 389 were shared among all participants. Of the shared metabolites, lactose was the least and lactobionate the most variable metabolite. In the biological super pathway analysis, xenobiotics were the most variable metabolites. Infant age, maternal age, number of live births, and pre-pregnancy BMI were associated with the milk metabolome. In conclusion, the most variable metabolites originate from environmental exposures while the well-conserved core metabolites are linked to cell metabolism or are crucial for infant nutrition and osmoregulation. Understanding the variability of the breast milk metabolome can help identify components that are crucial for infant nutrition, growth, and development.
了解人乳代谢组可以帮助我们了解婴儿的营养和健康状况。本研究采用非靶向代谢组学方法，分析了 31 名健康参与者的母乳样本，以评估不同背景参与者母乳中的共有代谢物，并了解不同的人口统计学、健康和环境因素如何影响母乳代谢组。通过四种独立的 UPLC-MS/MS 方法对母乳样本进行分析。采用代谢物集富集分析来研究最可变和最不变的代谢物。采用冗余分析评估参与者因素与代谢组之间的相关性。在所有 31 名参与者和每种非靶向 UPLC-MS/MS 方法之间，共检测到 731 种代谢物，其中 389 种在所有参与者中共有。在共有代谢物中，乳糖是最少变的代谢物，乳糖酸盐是最可变的代谢物。在生物超途径分析中，外源化学物质是最可变的代谢物。婴儿年龄、母亲年龄、活产数和孕前 BMI 与母乳代谢组有关。总之，最可变的代谢物来源于环境暴露，而保存良好的核心代谢物与细胞代谢有关，或者对婴儿的营养和渗透压调节至关重要。了解母乳代谢组的可变性有助于确定对婴儿营养、生长和发育至关重要的成分。
