Pregnancy and early infancy are periods of rapid change for mother and infant. Nutrition plays a key role in optimizing maternal outcomes of pregnancy and in ensuring healthy growth and development for infants in the short and long term. Our group's overall goal is to optimize nutrition during these vulnerable periods of pregnancy and infancy by carrying out observational and interventional research in populations of pregnant people and their infants, including those born preterm. We aim to (1) understand the metabolic dysregulation associated with maternal obesity and devise strategies to improve outcomes of these high-risk pregnancies and (2) determine the impact of infant growth patterns and early nutrition (including human milk) on a broad range of health and developmental outcomes later in life.
Mandy Brown Belfort, MD, MPH leads a collaborative program of epidemiologic, interventional, and translational research investigating: 1) the composition of human milk and how human milk nutrients and bioactive components influence preterm infant physical growth and brain development; 2) new methods for assessing healthy growth in preterm infants over time; and 3) the quality of nutritional care and outcomes during neonatal intensive care. Together, these lines of investigation will inform new diet-based strategies to improve health and neurodevelopmental outcomes in children born preterm.
Expanding on these general areas of focus:
- Paige Berger, RD, PhD studies the role of human milk oligosaccharides and other bioactive components on full-term and preterm infant brain development using MRI. Her research also examines the role of maternal diet on the carbohydrate composition of maternal milk, and whether this relationship impacts physical growth and brain development in their infants.
- Margaret Ong, MD, MPH also studies human milk oligosaccharides in relation to preterm infant body composition and brain development.
- Katherine Bell, MD focuses on micronutrients in human milk as well as translating methods for body composition assessment into clinical care and patient-oriented research.
Learn more about the Belfort Lab and their work.
Carmen Monthé-Drèze, MD conducts epidemiologic and translational research on the impact of pre-pregnancy obesity during pregnancy on offspring health during the first 1,000 days. Specifically, her research investigates: (1) the characteristics of the in utero nutritional, metabolic and hormonal and how this in utero milieu influences offspring physical growth, brain, and neurodevelopment; (2) neurobiological and behavioral mechanisms mediating the developmental programming of obesity, with a focus on early life eating behaviors and related brain circuitry. She is working to devise new supplementation strategies to ameliorate metabolic imbalances in pregnancy, with the overall goal of improving health outcomes in children born to mothers with metabolic dysfunction.
