Collection and storage of human milk for macronutrient and macromolecule analysis—an overview

Decades of research have established that breastfeeding has multiple benefits for maternal and infant health, yet much remains to be elucidated about the underlying biological mechanisms. Research in this area requires analysis of human milk and its nutritive and bioactive components, with knowledge of compositional variations that occur during the course of a single feed, diurnally, with stage of lactation, and in response to maternal diet or health status. Standardization of methods is critical to ensure accuracy and maximize comparability between studies. The optimal collection strategy will depend on the specific research question and component(s) of interest, and must consider when and how the milk is collected, as well as the processing and storage of the milk sample. In this chapter, we describe and compare different milk sampling strategies, expression methods, and storage containers, and discuss the impact of storage time and temperature on specific milk components.