Resistin and leptin in breast milk and infants in early life

Background: The role of adipokines in early life is considered an emerging topic issue in nutritional researches. Aims: To evaluate serum resistin and leptin concentrations and their relations in infants and in breast milk. Study design: We enrolled 41 term, AGA, healthy infants, of which 23 exclusively breast-fed (BF) and 18 formula-fed (FF), aged less than 6 months. Breast milk (BM) samples were collected from 23 breastfeeding mothers of the infants enrolled. Resistin concentration in serum and BM was determined by ELISA test (Human-Resistin-ELISA, Mediagnost, Reutlingen, Germany). Leptin concentration was determined by Radioimmunoassay method (LEP-R40, Mediagnost, Reutlingen, Germany). Infants weight, length and body mass index were measured. We used Mann-Whitney test. Spearman correlation was applied. Statistical significance was set at p<0.05. Data are reported as median and interquartile range (IR). Results: Infants serum resistin concentration was 9.30 (5.02) ng/ml. Breast milk resistin concentration (n = 23) was 0.18 (0.44) ng/ml. Leptin concentration was 3.04 (3.68) ng/ml in infants serum and in BM was 2.34 (5.73) ng/ml. Serum resistin concentrations in BF infants correlated positively with BM resistin (r = 0.636, p = 0.035). We have shown a positive correlation between resistin and leptin in total group of infants (r = 0.44, p = 0.05), confirmed in breastfed subjects (r = 0.65, p = 0.02). No correlations were found between serum hormones and anthropometric parameters of infants. Conclusion: Our findings show interestingly a positive correlation between resistin concentrations in BF infants serum and in BM and between resistin and leptin in infants. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.