Breast milk sugars 'protect babies'

Sugars that occur naturally in breast milk reduce the number of harmful bugs in a baby's stomach.

Tests using an infant formula containing a mixture of the compounds were found to dramatically lower levels of bacteria such as E.coli.

At the same time the sugars - called oligosaccharides - increased the number of friendly bacteria.

They also made the environment in babies' bowels more acidic, which suits "good" bugs but is unhealthy for "bad" bugs.

Natasha Bye, head of scientific affairs at Milupa, the company making the infant formula, said: "In terms of providing a protective line of defence, this is very exciting for us. We have achieved a selective increase of good bacteria and a decrease of the nasty ones."

A total of 90 infants took part in the study conducted in Holland and Germany.

One group of babies were fed infant formula containing the "prebiotic" oligosaccharide mixture. The other received a standard preparation.

Later tests showed that between 2.5% and 3% of the gut bacteria carried by the second group were harmful.

But in the "prebiotic" group harmful bugs only made up 0.5% of their bacteria.

The research was led by Dr Gunter Boehm at the laboratories of Milupa's Dutch parent company, Numicho, in Friedrichsdorf, Germany,

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