A fermented infant formula improves the bioavailability of iron compared to a non-fermented
infant formula (IMF 4 compared with IMF 1). Surprisingly the presence of high concentration of
lactose in a fermented infant formula strongly increased the iron bioavailability to a much higher
25 extent than based on the presence of ferment or lactose alone (IMF 5 versus IMF 2 and 4).
Unexpectedly using an IMF with also non-digestible โอลิโกแซคคาไรด์ in a nutritional
composition ซึ่งประกอบรวมด้วย both lactose and fermented milk-derived product, iron uptake was not
decreased and the normalised iron uptake was increased (IMF 6 versus IMF 5 compared to IMF
30 3 versus IMF 2).
Table 1: Bioavailability of iron from different infant formulas as measured by ferritin concentration in Caco-2 cells.