Serum concentration of appetite‐regulating hormones of mother–infant dyad according to the type of feeding

Abstract

Abstract Satiety and appetite‐stimulating hormones play a role in the regulation of food intake. Breastfed infants may have a different profile of serum appetite‐regulating hormones than formula‐fed infants. We propose to demonstrate that the serum concentration of appetite regulatory hormones differs according to the type of feeding and that there is a correlation between the serum concentrations of these hormones in mothers and in infants at 4 months of age. In a cross‐sectional analysis, 167 mother–newborn dyads at the Hospital Civil de Guadalajara were enrolled: 74 full breastfeeding (FBF), 56 partial breastfeeding (PBF), and 37 receiving human milk substitutes (HMS). Serum levels of ghrelin (pg/ml), leptin (ng/ml), peptide YY (pg/ml), and glucagon‐like peptide‐1 (GLP‐1) (pM) were measured. We performed one‐way analysis of variance, unpaired Student t test, post hoc Tukey test, and Pearson correlation. The total sample at 16 weeks postpartum included 167 dyads. The mean age was 16 ± 1 weeks. The concentrations of GLP‐1 (pM) and peptide YY (pg/ml) were higher in the FBF group (42.6 and 442.9) than in the HMS group (35.2 and 401.9), respectively, p = 0.046 and p = 0.056. And, the FBF group had higher correlation coefficients of ghrelin (r = 0.411 vs. 0.165), GLP‐1 (r = 0.576 vs. 0.407), and peptide YY (r = 0.218 vs. 0.067), respectively, than the HMS group. The concentrations of GLP‐1 and peptide YY were higher in the FBF group when compared with the HMS group. Mother–infant dyads fed by FBF had more significant direct correlations of appetite‐regulating hormones than those who received HMS.

Keywords

• appetite regulatory hormones
• breastfeeding
• formula feeding
• infants