Breasts-fed infants achieve a higher rate of brain and whole body docosahexaenoate accumulation than formula-fed infants not consuming dietary docosahexaenoate

Docosahexaenoate (DHA) has been increasingly recognized as an important fat ty acid for neural and visual development during the first 6 mon of life. O ne important point of controversy that remains is the degree to which adequ ate levels of DHA can be acquired from endogenous synthesis in infants vs. what should be provided as dietary DHA. We have approached this problem by a retrospective analysis of published body composition data to estimate the actual accumulation of DHA in-the human infant brain, liver, adipose tissu e, remaining lean tissue, and whole body. Estimating whether infants can sy nthesize sufficient DHA required comparison to and extrapolation from anima l data. Over the first 6 mon of life, DHA accumulates st about 10 mg/d in t he whole body of breast-fed infants, with 48% of that amount appearing in t he brain. To achieve that rate of accumulation, breast-fed infants need to consume a minimum of 20 mg DHA/d.. Virtually all breast milk provides a DHA intake of at least 60 mg/d. Despite a store of about 1,050 mg of DHA in bo dy fat at term birth and an intake of about 390 mg/d alpha-linolenate (alph a-LnA), the brain of formula-fed infants not consuming DHA accumulates half the DHA of the brain of breastfed infants while the rest of the body actua lly loses DHA over the first 6 mon of life. No experimental data indicate t hat formula-fed infants not consuming DHA are able to convert the necessary 5.2% of alpha-LnA intake to DHA to match the DHA accumulation of breast-fe d infants. We conclude that dietary DHA should likely be provided during at least the first 6 mon of life.