Health & Wellbeing

Discussing a study on selenium levels in Christchurch infants, the researchers commented that their plasma levels were lower than that reported for infants in Germany, Finland and the USA. Levels in formula-fed infants fell by one-half to one third when measured 1-2 months after birth. Apart from areas in China where Keshan disease was prevalent, levels as low as those found in the Christchurch infants were as low as those of premature infants on parental nutrition. Levels in Christchurch premature infants requiring intensive care were even lower.

Christchurch breast milks are low by world standards, and the cow's-milk based formulas three times lower. Half of Christchurch' breast-fed infants receive less than the minimum estimated 10mcg requirement of selenium; formula-fed infants receive remarkably less

There is a broad safety window for supplementation, with no cases of selenosis reported fro infants receiving up to 47mcg per day.

Source: Selenium status of Christchurch Infants and the effects of diet, Bolamore, Brown, Darlow, George, Shrie and Winterbourn, NZMJ 22 April, 1992.

Selenium content in infant formulas

A brief survey of infant formula on sale in supermarkets revealed that all contained Iron and Vitamin E, with only two containing selenium.

The two containing selenium, in the form of Sodium Selenite, were Isomil Soy Formula and Similac, with Iron. Selenium was not listed in the table of contents of either, though Sodium was and appeared in the paragraph on the main ingredients.

The significance of this will become apparent in the lead article on Cot Deaths and Selenium & Vitamin E Deficiency by Patricia Holborrow and Don Money.

Nationwide Selenium Supplementation for premature babies

As a result of the research all premature babies have been receiving Selenium supplementation for aplmost a year. This project, funded by the Health Research Council, is being run by Christine Winterbourn's team in collaboration with paediatric specialists.

Yes, its good news but it could have happened 25 years ago. In 1970, following research on selenium and SIDS by veterinary researcher Don Money, Dr Neil Begg, the then Medical Director of the Plunket Society, proposed a trial of selenium supplementation for  North Island new borns, compared with non-supplemented South Isladn newborns as controls.

"It didn't get started", Don Money commented in Medical Hypotheses, 1992, 39,286-290, "because the North Islanders complained that their infants were to be experiemented upon, and South Iaslanders that were to be left out as untreated controls"