Pioneering research at KU helps convince infant formula makers to make change
LAWRENCE, Kan. -- Infant formula is the next best thing to mother's milk for babies and is getting better thanks in part to University of Kansas research on infant nutrition and cognitive development.
The two major formula producers in the United States have announced plans to add certain nutritional supplements, specifically two fatty acids that are present in mother's milk, to baby formula. Their decision was based on accumulated recent research nationwide, including pioneering work by two KU researchers.
The researchers -- Susan Carlson, professor of nutrition at the KU Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan., and John Colombo, professor of psychology and associate dean of the Graduate School at KU's Lawrence campus -- gathered data on infant nutrition and cognitive development in infancy that helped convince the Ross Products and Mead Johnson Nutritionals infant formula companies to add the compounds to their Similac and Enfamil brand formulas.
One compound is a fatty acid called docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA, which is present in a woman's blood during pregnancy and is related to the behavior of her offspring during infancy and childhood. DHA is found in very high amounts in the central nervous system along with another very long chain fatty acid, arachidonic acid, or ARA. Both DHA and ARA start to accumulate in the fetal brain around the sixth month of pregnancy. After birth, infants continue to receive dietary DHA and ARA from their mothers' milk.
Formulas with DHA and ARA have been available in Asia, Europe and South America for several years. An FDA ruling late last year was the final step that cleared the way for the addition of these compounds to term formulas in the United States this spring.
While at the University of Tennessee, Carlson began the first study of development in preterm infants fed experimental formulas with DHA compared to infants fed ordinary formulas. Her study was based on the theory that dietary DHA was needed for optimal development of preterm infants. She and other investigators amassed clinical studies showing that preterm infants and some term infants benefit from receiving DHA and ARA in their diet.
When Carlson came to KU two years ago, she began collaborating with Colombo, whose laboratory conducts basic research on infant attention through the KU Schiefelbush Institute for Life Span Studies in Lawrence.
"We had observed that infants who received DHA in their formula looked at pictures of faces for a fraction of a second less than infants who did not, but we had no idea how to interpret the results," Carlson said. "Every developmental specialist I talked to told me to call Dr. Colombo for help in interpreting our data."
Colombo hopes to identify infants who could benefit from interventions to prevent problems at older ages. Colombo said the current measures, such as measuring infant attention, have the potential to identify infants who are at risk for later deficits in cognitive function. His ultimate hope is to identify when brain systems that influence attention come on line and to predict how early variations in the development of attention relate to later attention, language and intelligence.
"Our lab had developed, charted and tested many of the measures that were being used in the clinical studies of DHA supplementation," Colombo said. "We had been called upon to consult with both formula manufacturers and government agencies who were interested in the question of adding DHA to infant formulas. She was finding something that fit quite nicely with a measure that was essentially the same as one we had worked on."
Colombo said the clinical finding that a dietary component could influence the measures he was studying was exciting to him at the time and seemed worthy of further exploration.
Carlson and Colombo are now following 70 infants born to women whose DHA status was known during pregnancy and at the end of pregnancy. They are scheduled to complete the first phase of the research in June. At that point, they should have an idea whether individual differences in maternal DHA status are related to some aspects of infant development.
Their current infant study is funded by OmegaTech Inc. of Boulder, Colo., which produces high-DHA eggs. These eggs could be added to a woman's diet during pregnancy to get a greater amount of DHA. The study was initiated with a small intramural grant from the University of Kansas Medical Center Research Institute and is being conducted in laboratory space at the KU Medical Center provided by the Life Span Institute's Center for Research on Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities.
Media ContactsBridget Koan, KU Medical Center, (913) 588-1651
ONLINE RESOURCES AThttp://www.ur.ku.edu/News/02N/AprNews/Apr11/formula.html
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