Incubating donor milk with some of the mother’s own breast milk makes it more personalised

Quick Summary: Recent research shows pasteurised donor human milk (DHM) could be inoculated with a mother’s own milk (MOM). This restores the unique live microbiota which results in personalised milk.

As well a complex mixture of bioactive components, human breast milk contains beneficial live microbes which are unique to that mother.

But when breast milk is pasteurised so that it can be safely donated to a milk bank or to another mother, this drastically reduces the beneficial live microbes in the milk.

But — scientists have recently discovered that mixing some of a mother’s own breast milk with the pasteurised donor milk helps restore the unique beneficial live microbes in the milk — so that the donor human milk is more personalised to the mother.

Now recent research takes this one step further.

Monica F. Torrez Lamberti and colleagues have shown pasteurised donor human milk (DHM) could be inoculated with different percentages (10% and 30%) of mother’s own milk (MOM).

This restores the unique live microbiota which results in personalised milk (RM10 and RM30, respectively).