Abstract
Introduction
There is no information on the whole body fatty acid (FA) contents of preterm or term
infants, although scattered information on the FA-composition of many organs is available.
Material and methods
We collected data on the weights, lipid contents and FA-compositions of the quantitatively
most important fetal organs of appropriate for gestational age (AGA) Western infants.
From these we estimated the total body contents of linoleic (LA), arachidonic (AA)
and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids at 25, 35 and 40 weeks of gestation.
Results
Western infants accrete FA in the order of LA>AA>DHA at all stages during pregnancy
and the highest accretion rates are reached in the last 5 weeks of gestation, i.e.
342 mg LA, 95 mg AA and 42 mg DHA/day. At term, most of the infant's LA, AA and DHA is located in adipose tissue
(68, 44 and 50%, respectively), with substantial amounts of LA also located in skeletal
muscle (17%) and skin (13%); of AA in skeletal muscle (40%) and brain (11%); and of
DHA in brain (23%) and skeletal muscle (21%). The term AGA infant has accreted about
21 g LA, 7.5 g AA and 3 g DHA, which constitutes a gap of 12 g LA, 3.3 g AA and 1.5 g DHA compared to a 35 weeks old AGA infant.
Conclusion
The current fetal LA, AA and DHA pool sizes and accretion rates may especially be
useful to estimate the preterm infant's requirements and the maternal LCP needs during
pregnancy. Since they derive from populations with typically Western diets they do
not necessarily reflect ‘optimality’ or ‘health’.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: November 24, 2011
Accepted:
October 25,
2011
Received in revised form:
October 24,
2011
Received:
October 6,
2011
Identification
Copyright
© 2011 Elsevier Ltd. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
