P1122 THE EFFECT OF INFANT FORMULA ENRICHED WITH PREBIOTICS ON INFANT GUT MICROFLORA

Introduction: Impairments of gut microflora composition are widely distributed among infants, especially in bottle-fed ones. These impairments are the reason of a number functional gastrointestinal disorders such as constipation, colic, etc. in infants. Therefore the correction of gut microflora composition is of great value. One of recently developed approach to solving this problem is the including of prebiotics in infant formulas. Recently a new infant formula enriched with prebiotis– galacto- and fructoo-ligosaccharides (GOS and FOS, resp) similar to oligosaccharides of human milk in the dose of 4 g/l was developed. Therefore we were aimed at investigating the effects of this formula on infant gut microflora. Methods: 25 Russian healthy infants, 1–3 months of age, were enrolled into an open observational study. They were fed for 30 days with cow milk based adopted formula, containing GOS/FOS. Infant growth and their gut microflora content were checked before introducing of the formula and in 30 days. Results: Feeding by this formula provided the adequate infant growth. The tolerance of formula was good in most infants. It was noted that the feeding of the formula had a tendency to increase the stool frequency in infants. The data on infant gut microflora before and after formula introduction in their diet are presented in the table. It was shown that the feeding by formula with prebiotics GOS/FOS significantly increased Bifidobacteria content and decreased total content of Staphylococcus, St. Aureus and Klebsiella in infants stools.Table 1: The content of some bacteria in infant gut, M±SDConclusion: Infant feeding by formula enriched with GOS/FOS oligosaccharides promotes the growth of bifidobacteria in gut and at the same time inhibits the growth of some pathogenic bacteria.