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Two major international studies are providing new insight into how human milk is regulated, showing that some components respond to maternal nutrition, while others remain stable or reflect biological processes involved in lactation and infant growth.

Published in Science, the studies were conducted by the International Milk Composition (IMiC) Consortium, a global collaboration led by the University of Manitoba involving more than 20 researchers from 13 organizations across six countries and four continents.

IMiC was created to study human milk as a complex biological system rather than as a simple collection of nutrients. One study looked at maternal nutritional supplementation during lactation and how it can modify important parts of breast milk. The second study discovered that milk could offer clues about how the lactating breast is functioning and how this relates to infant growth.

"Together, the studies show that human milk is neither completely fixed nor simply a reflection of maternal diet," said Dr. Meghan Azad, IMiC director, UM Canada Research Chair in early nutrition and the developmental origins of health and disease, and a professor of pediatrics and child health at the Max Rady College of Medicine, Rady Faculty of Health Sciences.

"Some components respond readily to maternal nutritional interventions, while others are tightly regulated or reflect the biology of the lactating breast."

Azad, also a research scientist with Children's Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba, said this was one of the largest and most comprehensive efforts to study the complexity of human milk across diverse populations.

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