Effective use of expressed human milk in infant feeding requires proper handling, processing, storage, and administration in order to maintain its unique nutritional properties. One of the problems with expressed human milk is the separation of fat during processing, storage, and administration to the infant. Administration by continuous nasogastric infusion, either by intermittent gravity flow or by continuous mechanical pump, resulted in significant loss of fat and variation in the constitution of the milk delivered. Homogenization by ultrasonic treatment prevented changes in fat concentration during infusion and essentially eliminated loss of this nutrient during administration. The conditions necessary to achieve fat dispersion and stabilization of fat particles in human milk by ultrasonic treatment are described.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Cultured human nasal epithelial multicellular spheroids: polar cyst-like model tissues.

We report here a new readily cultured nonadherent hollow spheroidal epithelial tissue model: human nasal epithelial multicellular spheroids, prepared from brushings of human nasal epithelium in vivo. Although cultured cyst-like epithelial models developed from embryonic, transformed, or polypoid tissues have been reported previously, human nasal epithelial multicellular spheroids are derived from normal mature nontransformed human airway epithelial cells. In our studies, spheroids ranged in size from 50 to 700 microns diameter (averaging approximately 250 microns). Cells of the spheroid displayed morphological polarity and formed junctional complexes. Transcellular electrolyte transport may underlie the increase in spheroid size which occurred in culture. The ease and simplicity of the brushing and culture procedures reported here render normal and diseased human cell populations more readily accessible to investigation. We believe human nasal epithelial multicellular spheroids may have important applications in the study of electrolyte and fluid transport processes, ciliary motility, epithelial polarity, cellular metabolism, and drug cytotoxicity in normal and pathophysiological states of the human respiratory tract (e.g., cystic fibrosis).

Biological Transport, Active↗