Profiles of 71 Human Milk Oligosaccharides and Novel Sub-Clusters of Type I Milk: Results from the Ulm SPATZ Health Study

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: Although approximately 160 human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) have been identified, current studies on HMO quantitation are limited to the 10-19 most abundant HMOs. We assessed the variations in the relative concentrations of 71 HMO structures over lactation in human milk samples by an advanced liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry approach.

METHODS: Samples were collected from 64 mothers at 6 weeks, 6 months, and 12 months of lactation in the Ulm SPATZ Health Study, a German birth cohort. In this longitudinal study, we fitted linear mixed-effect models to analyze changes in the log2-transformed and standardized HMO concentration over time. Based on the profile of 71 HMOs, we also fitted a group-based multi-trajectory (GBMT) model to cluster mothers secreting cluster type I milk, who account for the majority of lactating mothers.

RESULTS: We found that 52 HMOs had a decreasing trend (regression coefficients ranging from -1.41 to -0.17) and 9 had an increasing trend (regression coefficients ranging from 0.25 to 0.64) during lactation, and the findings were statistically significant after multiple testing corrections. Using human milk samples of 49 mothers with type I milk, we further identified two novel sub-clusters with distinct longitudinal trajectories of concentrations of 71 HMOs during lactation: Type I-a (N = 20) and I-b (N = 29). These sub-clusters were not associated with maternal non-genetic characteristics.

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings extend existing knowledge about the structural diversity of HMOs and their variations over lactation. These may pave the way to investigate the potential nutritional benefits of various HMOs on infant health and early life development in the future.