The discovery that human breast milk contains an unexpected abundance of sugars that coats the lining of infants' intestines, protecting it from noxious bacteria, has been made using Agilent systems.
Results of the research, which was performed by scientists from the University of California, Davis, were published in this month's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the US.
Agilent's high-performance liquid chromatography polymer chip (HPLC-Chip) and quadrupole time-of-flight (QTOF) LC/MS technology provided researchers a new view of the oligosaccharide (sugar) structures produced in breast milk across stages of lactation among human mothers.
HPLC-Chip/MS technology has enabled researchers to identify more than 200 different human milk oligosaccharides structures, which researchers have discovered are an important factor in the healthy growth of infants.
