Relationships among human milk and plasma leptin concentrations and simpleanthropometric measurements in lactating women

Leptin is a hormone that may be involved in energy balance as well as repro duction, and its concentration in the circulation is correlated to both tot al body fatness and milk leptin concentrations in lactating women. However, because many commonly-used indicators of total body fatness require highly technical and expensive pieces of equipment and may actually be inappropri ate when studying lactating women, we were interested in investigating the relationships among more inexpensive and easily-obtained indicators of body composition, and plasma and milk leptin concentrations in lactating women. These indicators included triceps, subscapular and suprailiac skinfold thi cknesses, body and limb circumferences, waist-to-hip ratio, upper arm and t high muscle and fat areas. Results indicate that skim milk leptin concentra tions tend to be high when these indicators are high. Further, plasma lepti n concentrations are correlated strongly and positively with these simple i ndicators of adiposity. Plasma leptin concentrations in lactating women are described best by an equation that includes a combination of simple measur es of subcutaneous fat and limb circumferences. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science I nc.