The field of gastrointestinal (GI) development has been advancing at a rapid pace in the past 30 years.¹ The level of GI maturity of an individual infant is a major determinant of whether the infant will be able to meet nutritional needs by sole ...more

The intestinal surface comes into contact with a continuous flux of a vast variety of antigens. The primary function of the intestinal mucosa is absorption of nutrients. This function necessitates the transport of molecules across a single layer of epithelial cells ...more

The vital importance of nutrition in host defense has been recognized since the time of Hippocrates,¹ well before the appearance of the germ theory of infection in the nineteenth century.² Although traceable in origin to Metchnikoff³ and the cell theory ...more

Altering the expression of genes has become a rapidly evolving area of research in medicine. The realization that gene expression is important in a wide range of diseases, and not just in inherited disease, has resulted in recognition of the whole field ...more

In the 1950s, my mother read books about nutrition, by authors such as Adele Davis that espoused the concept of functional foods. Functional foods are those that have health benefits beyond that of their nutritional content ...more

We have known for years that protein is an essential nutrient. However, the unique role of protein metabolism in growth and Neurodevelopmental outcome is based on much newer data. Research by Patti Thureen, MD, Ekhard Ziegler, MD ...more

In the field of nutrition, vitamin D is a “hot topic.” If you enter “vitamin D” into the PubMed search engine, 45,000 entries appear. Currently, articles are being published on this important vitamin at a rate of almost 100 each month. For those of us caring for neonates and interested in infant nutrition, the big vitamin D story is the changed recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in 2008.¹ ...more