Salcedo, JaimeKarav, SercanLe Parc, AnnabelleCohen, Joshua L.de Moura Bell, Juliana M. L. N.Sun, AdamLange, Matthew C.2025-01-272025-01-2720182396-8370https://doi.org/10.1038/s41538-018-0013-9https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12428/28378Donor milk is the best option when mother's own milk is unavailable. Heat treatments are applied to ensure donor milk safety. The effects of heat treatments on milk gangliosides-bioactive compounds with beneficial antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and prebiotic roles-have not been studied. The most abundant gangliosides in non-homogenized human milk were characterized and quantified by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS)/MS before and after pasteurization treatments mimicking industrial conditions (63 degrees C/30 min, 72 degrees C/15 s, 127 degrees C/5 s, and 140 degrees C/6 s). Ganglioside stability over a 3-month period was assessed following the storage at 4 and 23 degrees C. Independent of the heat treatment applied, gangliosides were stable after 3 months of storage at 4 or 23 degrees C, with only minor variations in individual ganglioside structures. These findings will help to define the ideal processing and storage conditions for donor milk to maximize the preservation of the structure of bioactive compounds to enhance the health of fragile newborns. Moreover, these results highlight the need for, and provide a basis for, a standardized language enabling biological and food companies, regulatory agencies, and other food stakeholders to both annotate and compute the ways in which production, processing, and storage conditions alter or maintain the nutritive, bioactive, and organoleptic properties of ingredients and foods, as well as the qualitative effects these foods and ingredients may have on conferring phenotype in the consuming organism. Donor milk treatment: key nutrients preserved after pasteurization Donor human milk, the best alternative to mother's own milk, usually needs to be pasteurized before use out of safety concerns. Daniela Barile at University of California Davis, USA, and colleagues studied the effects of heat treatment and storage temperature and time on milk gangliosides, a class of sugar-derived compounds important for neural and brain development of newborns, among other bioactivities. They found that, while there were minor structural changes during mimicked industrial pasteurization processes, gangliosides remain stable for at least three months either in the refrigerator or at room temperature. These results may help standardize the processing protocols and storage conditions for donor milk, and the methods can be extended to other bioactive components.eninfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccessArticle2110.1038/s41538-018-0013-9N/AWOS:00059873090000131304255