Early enteral nutrition with exclusive donor milk instead of formula milk affects the time of full enteral feeding for very low birth weight infants

Min Wang; Xiaohui Gong; Lianhu Yu; Feifei Song; Dan Li; Qiaoling Fan; Ting Zhang; Xueming Yan

doi:10.3389/fnut.2024.1345768

Early enteral nutrition with exclusive donor milk instead of formula milk affects the time of full enteral feeding for very low birth weight infants

Front Nutr. 2024 Apr 24:11:1345768. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2024.1345768. eCollection 2024.

Authors

Min Wang^#^{1

2

3}, Xiaohui Gong^#⁴, Lianhu Yu^#^{1

5}, Feifei Song^{1

3}, Dan Li^{1

4}, Qiaoling Fan⁴, Ting Zhang^{1

2

3}, Xueming Yan⁶

Affiliations

¹ Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition, Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
² Institute of Pediatric Infection, Immunity and Critical Care Medicine, Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
³ Shanghai Donor Human Milk Bank, Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
⁴ Department of Neonatology, Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.
⁵ Department of Pediatrics, Shandong University, Qilu Hospital, Jinan, Shandong, China.
⁶ Shanghai Children's Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

This study investigated the effects of exclusive donor milk or formula in the first 7 days after birth, on the time to full enteral feeding, growth, and morbidity of adverse events related to premature infants. This was a retrospective study carried out from July 2014 to December 2019 at the Department of Neonatology of Shanghai Children's Hospital. All infants with a birth weight < 1,500 g and a gestational age ≤ 32 who received exclusive donor milk or formula in the first 7 days after birth were included in this study. The time to full enteral feeding (defined as 150 mL/kg) in the donor milk group was significantly shorter than in the formula group (18 vs. 22 days, p = 0.01). Donated breast milk was also associated with a lower incidence of NEC (4.4 vs. 7%, p < 0.01), ROP (3.8 vs. 13.2%, p < 0.01), and culture-confirmed sepsis (11 vs. 22.6%, p < 0.01). Using donated breast milk instead of current formula milk for early enteral nutrition can shorten the time to full enteral feeding and reduce the incidence of NEC, ROP, and sepsis.

Keywords: donor milk; enteral nutrition; formula milk; full enteral feeding; premature infants.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 81900548), and the Natural Science Foundation of Shanghai (grant number 23ZR1453100).