Analyzing B-vitamins in Human Milk: Methodological Approaches

However, there is insufficient information about the concentration of nutrients in human milk. For some nutrients, including B-vitamins, maternal intake affects their concentration in human milk but the extent to which inadequate maternal diets affect milk B-vitamin content is poorly documented.

Little is known about infant requirements for B-vitamins; recommendations are generally set as Adequate Intakes (AI) calculated on the basis of the mean volume of milk (0.78 L/day) consumed by infants exclusively fed with human milk from well-nourished mothers during the first six months, and the concentration of each vitamin in milk based on reported values. Methods used for analyzing B-vitamins, commonly microbiological, radioisotope dilution or more recently chromatographic, coupled with UV, fluorometric and MS detection, have rarely been validated for the complex human milk matrix.