The Nest 51: Navigating Nutrition in Preterm Births: Prevention and Support

The occurrence of preterm births have gone up to roughly 10% of babies globally. With current means of prevention being partial to a specific subset of women, cases occur much higher in certain regions, such as in Africa and South Asia. Nutritional strategies for preterm birth prevention are now being tapped, especially with the growing support from more and more clinical studies, specifically the use of omega-3 and micronutrients.

Preterm babies are born at a time when rapid brain growth happens in utero, and their premature birth causes them to miss out on this developmental phase and become more vulnerable to deficits. With the catchup required after birth, nutrition becomes an important factor. Studies have shown that neurodevelopment depends on adequate nutrition, such as the impact of high-quality protein, and intact brain growth factors.

The gut microbiota has now been linked to numerous health effects, thus efforts to boost this have been looked into. In the infant gut microbiota, it has been seen that prebiotics, such as Human Milk Oligosaccharides (HMOs), improve these microbiota patterns which may be associated with maturity. As preterm infants are at higher risk of specific HMO deficiencies and poorer outcomes, HMO supplementation shortly after birth has been shown to be a well-tolerated option to help increase feeding tolerance and support early postnatal growth.

Complementary feeding (CF) is a crucial step in nourishing the changing needs of an infant as they grow. While for preterm infants, the timing for initiating CF for preterm infants is still unclear, an individualized approach depending on the infant’s oral and developmental skills is suggested. Current studies also show early CF has no links to obesity nor allergy development in preterm infants. With regards to food choices, sequence and rate of introduction for preterm infants, the same standards as full-term infants are accepted.