Our daily food intake provides the nutrients to maintain health. However, in addition to the nutritional values, food can promote health and be beneficial in preventing diseases. Human milk is a unique food source that contains essential nutrients in the right balance and other bioactive factors that make it the ideal food for all healthy term infants. Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) play an important role in health, at several levels: acting as prebiotics promoting the growth of beneficial bacterial strains, preventing the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the intestine, and modulating the immune response against bacterial infections. However, despite their biological relevance and the advances made in the analytical field, very few studies have been carried out to better understand HMOs bioactivity mechanisms or to examine human metabolic response to dietary supplementation. This review describes the state-of-the-art of glycomics strategies, recent analytical methods, and future trends for the identification and discovery of bioactive sugars, the known mechanisms of action, and discusses findings of some recent human intervention trials.

我们每天的食物摄入量可提供维持健康所需的营养。但是，除了营养价值外，食物还可以促进健康，并有助于预防疾病。母乳是一种独特的食物来源，其中含有适当平衡的必需营养素和其他生物活性因子，使其成为所有健康足月婴儿的理想食物。人乳寡糖（HMO）在健康方面具有多个重要作用：作为益生元，可促进有益细菌菌株的生长，防止肠道中病原细菌的生长以及调节针对细菌感染的免疫反应。但是，尽管它们具有生物学意义并在分析领域取得了进步，为了更好地了解HMO的生物活性机制或检查人类对膳食补充的新陈代谢反应，进行了很少的研究。这篇综述描述了最新的糖组学策略，最新的分析方法以及鉴定和发现生物活性糖的未来趋势，已知的作用机理，并讨论了一些近期的人类干预试验的结果。