Similar Occurrence of Febrile Episodes Reported in Non-Atopic Children at Three to Five Years of Age after Prebiotics Supplemented Infant Formula.

This is a follow up study of a multicenter randomised placebo-controlled trial in seven centres in five West European countries. The RCT assessed the effect of infant formula supplemented with a mixture of prebiotics (with neutral short-chain and long-chain oligosaccharides and pectin-derived acidic oligosaccharides) during infancy in term-born children (n=1130). In the follow-up study 672 children (60% of the study population) participated: 232 (56%) from the prebiotics group (PG), 243 (58%) from the control group (CG), and 197 (66%) from the non-randomised breast-fed group (BG).

Can we define an infant's need from the composition of human milk?

Human milk is recommended as the optimal nutrient source for infants and is associated with several short- and long-term benefits for child health. When accepting that human milk is the optimal nutrition for healthy term infants, it should be possible to calculate the nutritional needs of these infants from the intake of human milk. These data can then be used to design the optimal composition of infant formulas.

Antibiotic use in infants in the first year of life in five European countries.

Aim: To assess in infants the number of illness episodes treated with antibiotics and prescription rates in five European countries.

Methods: This study was embedded in a multicenter nutritional intervention study and was conducted in five European countries. Infants were followed until 1 year of age.

Fluorescent cell barcoding as a tool to assess the age-related development of intracellular cytokine production in small amounts of blood from infants.

Fluorescent Cell Barcoding (FCB) is a flow cytometric technique which has been used for assessing signaling proteins. This FCB technique has the potential to be applied in other multiparameter analyses. Since data on antigen (Ag)-specific T-cell immune responses, like intracellular cytokine production, are still lacking in infants because limited blood volumes can be obtained for analysis, the FCB technique could be very useful for this purpose.

A mixture of three prebiotics does not affect vaccine specific antibody responses in healthy term infants in the first year of life.

Background: Previous studies have shown, that prebiotics can modulate the immune response in infants at risk for allergy, leading to a lower incidence of atopic dermatitis. Few studies have evaluated the effect of prebiotic carbohydrates alone on the vaccine-specific antibody response as a marker for the development of the immune system in healthy infants not at risk for allergy.

Aim: This study evaluates the effect of adding a specific prebiotic mixture of short chain galacto-oligosaccharides (scGOS)/long chain fructo-oligosaccharides (lcFOS) ratio 9:1 and pectin-derived acidic oligosaccharides (pAOS) to formula feeding on the specific immunoglobulin responses to Haemophilus influenza type b (Hib) and tetanus immunization in healthy non-atopic infants during the first year of life.