Bacteriological Profiles of Human Milk from Individual Donors and Pooled Samples from a Commercial Milk Bank

The bacteriological profiles of human milk samples collected from individual donors under supervised conditions of collection were compared to pooled human milk samples obtained from a commercial human milk bank. Total aerobic counts and total coliform counts of individual donor samples were lower than those of pooled, banked human milk. All of the 200 isolates from ten individual samples were staphylococci with Staphylococcus epidermidis predominating (82%). Only 1% of the isolates was identified as Staphylococcus aureus . Forty-two percent of the 100 isolates from five pooled samples were staphylococci and all of these staphylococci were coagulase-negative. Three percent of the isolates from the pooled samples were Streptococcus faecalis . The remainder (55%) were gram-negative organisms. S. epidermidis was the microorganism that was isolated most frequently from either individual (9 of 10) or pooled (3 of 5) samples.