“Human breast milk is not only a perfectly adapted nutritional supply for the infant, but probably the most specific personalised medicine that he/she is likely to receive, given at a time when gene expression being fine-tuned for life” write Cesar Victora and others in The Lancet breastfeeding series group 2016.
A new finding about the carefully tailored richness of human milk has shed light on the importance of myo-inositol, a cyclic sugar alcohol. The levels of myo-inositol are high over the first two weeks of lactation and gradually taper off over a period of a few months. In the early stages, the brain of the newborn is a site of rapid ‘wiring’, as synapses (or connections between nerve cells) are formed in profusion. Proper synapse formation during early development lays the foundation for cognitive development; inadequate synapse formation leads to development difficulties in the brain.
The group of Thomas Biederer at Yale (PNAS) also matched their findings on myo-inositol induced synapse abundance in cultured rat neurons in test tubes. Here too, myo-inositol promoted the formation of synapses between neurons.
