Vitamin A content in mature breast milk and its adequacy to the nutritional recommendations for infants

Objective. To determine vitamin A content in breast milk and evaluate whether it satisfies the recommendations for infants. Material and methods. Observational, prospective, cross sectional study. Milk samples were obtained between 30 and 90 days postpartum from mothers seen in public hospitals, and analyzed. Vitamin A concentration was determined by chromatography and its adequacy to the recommended dietary intake. The correlation between outcome measures was analyzed using Spearman's correlation coefficient. Results. A total of 79 mothers participated. Vitamin A concentration in milk samples was 1.80 mu mol/L (1.36-2.30) and the mean breastfeeding time was 57 days. No significant correlation between breastfeeding days and vitamin A content was observed. In 50% of the samples, vitamin A content did not satisfy the recommendations for infants. Conclusion. Vitamin A content was not enough to satisfy the recommendations in half of the cases.