Introduction: Among the OMICS technologies, that have emerged in recent years, metabolomics has allowed relevant step forwards in clinical research. Several improvements in disease diagnosis and clinical management have been permitted, even in neonatology. Among potentially evaluable biofluids, breast milk (BM) results are highly interesting, representing a fluid of conjunction between mothers newborns, describing their interaction.

Areas covered: in this review, updating a previous review article, we discuss research articles and reviews on BM metabolomics and found in MEDLINE using metabolomics, breast milk, neonatal nutrition, breastfeeding, human milk composition, and preterm neonates as keywords.

Expert opinion: Our research group has a profound interest in metabolomics research. In 2012, we published the first metabolomic analysis on BM samples, reporting interesting data on its composition and relevant differences with formula milk (FM), useful to improve FM composition. As confirmed by successive studies, such technology can detect the specific BM composition and its dependence on several variables, including lactation stage, gestational age, maternal or environmental conditions. Moreover, since BM contaminants or drug levels can be detected, metabolomics also results useful to determine BM safety. These are only a few practical applications of BM analysis, which will be reviewed in this paper.

简介：近年来出现的OMICS技术中，代谢组学已使临床研究迈出了重要的一步。甚至在新生儿医学方面，已经允许在疾病诊断和临床管理方面进行一些改进。在可能进行评估的生物流体中，母乳（BM）的结果非常有趣，代表了母亲新生儿之间的联系，说明了它们之间的相互作用。

涵盖的领域：在这篇评论中，更新了以前的评论文章，我们讨论了关于BM代谢组学的研究文章和评论，并在MEDLINE中以代谢组学，母乳，新生儿营养，母乳喂养，人乳成分和早产儿为关键词进行了研究。

专家意见：我们的研究小组对代谢组学研究具有浓厚的兴趣。2012年，我们发表了关于BM样品的首次代谢组学分析报告，报告了有关其成分的有趣数据以及与配方奶（FM）的相关差异，这些数据可用于改善FM成分。连续的研究证实，这种技术可以检测出特定的BM成分及其对几个变量的依赖性，包括泌乳阶段，胎龄，孕产妇或环境条件。此外，由于可以检测到BM污染物或药物水平，因此代谢组学也可用于确定BM安全性。这些只是BM分析的一些实际应用，将在本文中进行回顾。