Lactational programming, through which milk‐borne bioactives influence both neonatal and long‐term biological development, is well established. However, almost no research has investigated how developmental stimuli during a mother's early life may influence her milk bioactives in adulthood. Here, we investigated the association between maternal birth weight and milk epidermal growth factor (EGF) and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGF‐R) in later life. We predicted there would be a decrease in both milk EGF and EGF‐R in the milk produced by mothers who were themselves born low birth weight.
Study participants are from the Cebu Longitudinal Health and Nutrition Survey. Mothers (
Mothers who were low birth weight produced milk with significantly less EGF and more EGF‐R which resulted in a lower ratio of EGF to EGF‐R. These associations persisted after adjustment for infant age, maternal adiposity, and dietary energy.
While this is a small sample size, these preliminary findings suggest that maternal early life characteristics, such as birth weight, may be important contributors to variation in milk bioactives. Future work is necessary to understand how variation in maternal early life may influence milk composition in adulthood.