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Banking on donor human milk

Pediatric Research (2025)Cite this article

Comment to: Short outcomes of donor milk and mother’s own milk for preterm infants. Rahdar et al.

Human milk, or mother’s own milk (MOM), is the gold standard in nutrition for infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU).1,2 MOM has been shown to reduce morbidity and mortality in the NICU at all gestational ages, including very low birth weight (VLBW) infants who need caloric and nutrient fortification of the milk for optimal growth but share the same benefits as their greater gestational age counterparts.3 Benefits of MOM include reduction in occurrence of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), reduction of infections, decreased incidence of bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD), and decrease of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP). Use of MOM is also associated with improved growth and cognitive function in longer-term follow-up. Some of the benefits are hypothesized to depend on the immunoglobulins in MOM, while other benefits are thought to be due to MOM playing a role in healthy development of the gut and lung microbiome.4,5 This remains an active area of investigation.

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  1. St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Department of Hematology, Memphis, TN, USA

    William Beau Mitchell

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  1. William Beau Mitchell
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Correspondence to William Beau Mitchell.

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Mitchell, W.B. Banking on donor human milk. Pediatr Res (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41390-025-04710-w

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