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Influence of different breast expression techniques on human colostrum macronutrient concentrations
Camila Barros Melgaço da Silva1, Bernardo Vicari do Valle2, Úrsula Medeiros Araújo de Matos2
1Faculty of Medicine, Maternal and Child Department, Fluminense Federal University, Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. milabarros@yahoo.com.
Objective:
To evaluate the effects of breast expression methods on macronutrient and caloric concentrations in human colostrum.
Study Design:
A cross-sectional study in which colostrum samples were collected simultaneously from each breast using different milk expression methods, including manual expression or electric pumping, assigned by simple randomization. Macronutrients were measured by infrared spectroscopy, and their concentrations were compared by the Wilcoxon test.
Results:
Ninety-six samples from each breast of selected donors were evaluated. There were no differences in carbohydrate (6.1 vs. 6.1 g/dL; p: 0.218) and protein (2.1 vs. 2.1 g/dL; p: 0.772) concentrations between the samples collected by manual expression and electric pumping. However, in those collected by manual expression, lipid concentrations (2.6 vs. 2.2 g/dL; p < 0.001) and caloric content (60 vs. 57 Kcal/dL; p = 0.001) were higher.
Conclusions:
Colostrum collected by hand expression had a higher lipid concentration and caloric content than that collected by an electric pump.
