SCIENCE / MEDICINE : Cholesterol and Mother’s Milk

Babies who drink mother’s milk have lower cholesterol levels than infants fed formulas resembling cow’s milk, researchers reported. University of Illinois researchers said they found that infants’ cholesterol levels appear to depend on the protein composition of the milk they drink.

Cow’s milk contains about three times as much protein as human milk, and the proportion of two major types of protein--caesin and whey--also varies, researchers said. Human milk has about one part of casein to two parts of whey, while cow’s milk has four parts casein to one part whey.

In their eight-week study, Susan Potter and her colleagues studied 40 newborn infants and the impact of various milk-like formulas on their cholesterol levels.

At the end of the study, blood cholesterol levels were highest in the infants fed the formula with the greatest casein-to-whey ratio --the one most like cow’s milk, researchers said. In addition, the only babies to show an increase in cholesterol between their fourth and eighth weeks were those on the high casein-whey formula. Levels of another potentially harmful fatty substance in the blood, triglycerides, were also highest in that group.

And in a separate survey involving cholesterol, about 40% of people with a family history of heart disease said they have not had their cholesterol tested, even though most think they should. A Gallup Organization survey, commissioned by Merck Sharp & Dohme of West Point, Pa., which makes cholesterol-lowering drugs, found that 54% of 1,000 respondents and their spouses had ever undergone cholesterol testing.

Of the 647 people with a family history of heart disease, 58% had their cholesterol checked at least once, while 42% had not. About 96% of respondents said they think people who have a family history of heart disease should have their cholesterol levels tested.