Expert panel on infant formula publishes report in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

An expert panel on infant formula, convened under the auspices of Columbia’s  Institute of Human Nutrition, published its report and recommendations in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition on October 13, 2021. The panel’s charge was to recommend a comprehensive yet practical set of clinical assessments and immune system measurements that demonstrate reasonable certainty of no harm, for healthy term infants, for novel bioactive ingredients intended for addition to infant formulas. 

The panel was convened in Summer 2020 by Richard Deckelbaum, MD, Immediate Past Director of the Institute of Human Nutrition, and John Wallingford, PhD, of Nutrispectives, LLC. Its nine members represented expertise in pediatrics, nutrition, and immunology and included both U.S. and international perspectives. Dr. Deckelbaum had previously chaired a task force for the National Academies of Science report on “Infant Formula: Evaluating the Safety of New Ingredients”, published in 2004.   Current panel members participated in a 2-day virtual symposium in November 2020 and in follow-up discussions throughout early 2021. 

The report is timely in the context of growing evidence to indicate that the first year of life is a critical and dynamic period for immune system development. Given that this development is influenced in part by dietary components, there is increasing academic and commercial interest in adding bioactive ingredients to infant formula to better simulate the composition of human milk and to reduce disparities in health outcomes between breastfed and formula-fed infants. The panel’s findings and recommendations are applicable for industry, regulatory, and academic settings, and will inform safety assessments for immunomodulatory ingredients in foods besides infant formula.

The Full PDF version of the publication can be found here.