Serum concentration of appetite-regulating hormones of mother-infant dyad according to the type of feeding.

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.
Competing Interests: None.