Boosting infant formula for brain development

A study by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Centre on Aging (HNRCA) at Tufts University suggests that a micronutrient in human breast milk could provide a significant benefit to the developing brains of newborns; a finding that illuminates the link between nutrition and brain health, which could help improve infant formulas used in circumstances where breastfeeding isn’t possible.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), also paves the way to study what role the micronutrient might play in the brain during aging.

Researchers found that the micronutrient, a sugar molecule called myo-inositol, was most prominent in human breast milk during the first months of lactation, when neuronal connections, known as synapses, are forming rapidly in the infant brain. This was true regardless of the mother’s ethnicity or background. The researchers profiled and compared human milk samples collected across sites in Mexico City, Shanghai and Cincinnati by the Global Exploration of Human Milk study, which included healthy mothers of term singleton infants.

Thomas Biederer, senior scientist on the Neuroscience and Aging Team at the HNRCA, senior author of the study and faculty member at the Yale School of Medicine, said brain connectivity is guided by genetic and environmental forces as well as human experiences.

Diet is an environmental force that offers many opportunities for study. In early infancy, the brain could be more sensitive to dietary factors because the blood–brain barrier is more permeable and small molecules taken in as food can pass from the blood to the brain more easily.

Similar levels of myo-inositol across women in very different geographic locations suggest it has an important role in human brain development.

Research has shown that brain inositol levels decline over time as infants develop. In adults, brain inositol levels have been linked with major depressive disorders and bipolar disease. Genetic alterations in myo-inositol been linked to schizophrenia. Additionally, people with Down’s syndrome and patients with Alzheimer’s disease have been found to have higher than normal accumulations of myo-inositol.

According to Biederer, the research indicates that it may be beneficial to increase the levels of myo-inositol in infant formula where breastfeeding is not possible.

However, it is too soon to recommend that adults consume more myo-inositol, which can be found in significant quantities in certain grains, beans, bran, citrus fruits and cantaloupe, because there is still further research needed on the matter.

“My colleagues at the HNRCA and I are now pursuing research to test how micronutrients like myo-inositol may impact cells and connectivity in the aging brain,” Biederer said. “We hope this work leads to a better understanding of how dietary factors interplay with age-related brain aberrations.”

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