ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Pediatr.
Sec. Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition
This article is part of the Research TopicStrategies to Improve Children's Gastrointestinal HealthView all articles
A Unique Blend of Five Human Milk Oligosaccharides Supports Recovery of Infant Microbiome Composition and Function After Ex vivo Antibiotic Use
Provisionally accepted
- Abbott Nutrition, Columbus, United States
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Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are the third most abundant solid component of human breast milk, with well-established prebiotic and immunomodulatory functions. HMOs serve as selective substrates to support the growth of beneficial microbes in the developing gastrointestinal tract. At the same time individual HMOs have been shown to also exert selection against pathogens via direct anti-adhesive mechanisms. A longstanding hypothesis has held that HMOs act in concert and with other bioactive components of milk, and that this complex matrix of milk components collectively accounts for both the benefits to microbiome development and reduced risk of infectious disease associated with breastfeeding. The prebiotic activity of a diverse blend of fucosylated, acetylated, and sialylated HMOs was examined using microbiota cultured in an ex vivo model of the infant gastrointestinal tract before, during and after the supplementation of common childhood antibiotics. The anti-adhesive activity of this blend against infant-prevalent bacterial pathogens was tested using in vitro cultured intestinal epithelial cells. Taken together, this data suggests that a blend of 5 specific HMOs acts through multiple selection mechanisms to shape the development of the microbiota and interrupt opportunistic microbial pathogenesis.
Keywords: antibiotic resilience, human milk oligosaccharides, Immune development, pediatric microbiome, Pediatric Nutrition
Received: 10 Dec 2025; Accepted: 03 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Morrin, Buck and Hill. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: David R Hill
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