By David Goodman
New research suggests high
concentrations of manganese found in soybean-based
baby formula can lead to
brain damage in infants and altered behaviors in adolescents.
Dr. Francis Crinella, clinical professor
of pediatrics at UC-Irvine, and Trinh Tran, a graduate researcher
at the UC-Davis Department of Animal Studies, have described
how the soybean plant lifts up manganese in the soil and concentrates
it so that its use in soy-based infant formula can result
in as many as 200 times
the level found in natural breast milk.
These and other experts believe that such
high concentrations could pose a threat to the immature metabolic
systems of babies up to 6 months of age.
The size of the market for soy-based infant
formula is held closely, and none of the producers contacted
by Insight would reveal sales figures. An independent expert
estimates the market for all infant formula to be about $3
billion, with soy-based formula accounting for about $750
million of that, having doubled in the last 10 years.
The best-selling brand is Isomil (Ross
Products Division of Abbott Laboratories), followed by Enfamil
ProSobee (Mead Johnson), Nursoy (Wyeth-Ayerst) and Alsoy (Carnation).
According to Crinella and Tran, the discovery
of potential harm from such products began in 1980 when a
federal agency then called the Food and Nutrition Board established
safe and acceptable values for manganese in adults, toddlers
and infants.
Permissible levels for the three age groups
ranged from 2.5 to 3 mg per day for adults, 1 to 1.5 mg per
day for toddlers and 0.5 to 1 mg per day for infants under
6 months. This job now is handled by the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA), which today permits 0.6 mg per day for infants, 120
times the amount found in mother's milk.
The
FDA says that in the next few months it will lower the guidelines.
Ruth Welch, an FDA spokeswoman, confirms
that a report will recommend a minimum of only 0.005 mg of
manganese a day and no maximum for infants up to age 6 months.
Despite government assurances of safety
at the recommended levels, the professional literature shows
that in 1983 Phillip Collipp, a pediatric physician at Nassau
County [N.Y.] Medical Center, tested infant formula for manganese
in popular soy brands, including Isomil, ProSobee and Nursoy,
purchased locally. He published data showing that they contained
from 0.2 mg to 1 mg per quart. Later that year, Drs. Bo Lönnerdal
and Carl Keen of the UC-Davis Department of Nutrition tested
formula taken from pharmacy shelves worldwide.
They found higher manganese concentrations
in soy formulas, ranging from 0.4 mg to 2.2 mg; the mean value
of 1.2 mg vastly exceeded the infinitesimal 0.005 mg found
in mother's breast milk.
After the research by Collipp, Lönnerdal
and Keen, nutritional scientists worldwide reported that newborn
babies, in symbiosis with their mothers during the first weeks,
absorbed most of the manganese in breast milk. The tiny amounts
the baby suckles a dozen times a day appear to function as
a catalyst for more than 50 biochemical reactions. This suggests
a newborn's digestive system is superbly attuned to absorb
the infinitesimal levels of manganese in mother's milk, and
that, in fact, it is essential to the development process.
At least some of this soy formula, which
tested at up to 200 times the manganese of breast milk clearly
has the potential to overload
the infant's little body.
Lönnerdal says the baby's immature
liver cannot handle the manganese load by excreting the excess.
In newborns, ingested manganese rises to high levels in the
blood plasma and red blood cells, then permeates the liver,
kidneys and other soft tissues of the body, including the
brain. He believes, however, that by the time of weaning,
when the infant normally consumes solid food, it can metabolize
manganese.
Crinella calculated that by the age of
8 months an infant fed soy formula daily absorbs approximately
1.1 mg of manganese above metabolic need. "A significant
amount, about 8 percent, is deposited in a brain region vulnerable
to threat of manganese attack," he says.
Six years ago, tragic incidents in two
London hospitals, the Hospital for Sick Children and Queen
Elizabeth's Hospital for Children, alerted the medical community
to the vulnerability of sick babies to manganese attacks on
the brain. Suffering from liver disease, the babies had received
nutrient solutions containing recommended amounts of manganese
through an intravenous tube. The manganese had no greater
concentration than in soy formula and was considered safe
by government standards, but after a few months the infant
brains showed damage.
Of 57 babies receiving "safe"
amounts of manganese, two fell ill with movement disorders
and six suffered damage to their basal ganglia when examined
by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Also, Crinella has done extensive studies
on the effect of manganese in adolescents. His research detected
relatively high
levels of manganese in the scalp hair of hyperactive children
when compared with matched control subjects.
Crinella at first was puzzled by the high
manganese levels in hyperactive children. The only exposure
of his subjects had to be through diet, yet California has
historic low levels of manganese in its soil, air and water.
Because adolescents metabolize at least 97 percent of manganese
ingested, the exposure had to have occurred earlier in life,
possibly from manganese in baby food, or (as his research
proceeded further) soy-based infant formula. Could elevated
manganese be a clue to the current epidemic of adolescent
violence sweeping the nation?
Crinella did a study with rats and manganese
supplementation and the results were clear-cut: Rats given
0.05 mg. of manganese daily for 18 days in the amount comparable
with the manganese in breast milk did as well as the control
group given no manganese. Rats given supplemental manganese
five times higher at 0.25 mg daily suffered a precipitous
decline in basal-ganglia dopamine of 48 percent. The rats
dosed daily with the highest amount, 0.50 mg, had a plunge
in dopamine by a staggering 63 percent.
"The brain undergoes a tremendous
proliferation of neutrons, dentrites and synapses during the
first months of life," Crinella says. "The brain
especially is vulnerable in early life precisely because such
rampant growth is taking place, and at that time intrusions
by potentially toxic substances like manganese perturbing
the emerging neural organization can exert long-term effects.
Manganese ingested during a period of rapid brain growth and
deposited in the critical basal ganglia region may affect
behavior during puberty when powerful stresses are un- leashed
on the dopamine neurons, and altered behavioral patterns appear."
These altered behavioral patterns during
late childhood and early adolescence, according to Crinella,
may be diagnosed as hyperactivity with attentional deficit
- or perhaps as "manganese-toxicity syndrome."
Everett Hodges, founder of the Violence
Research Foundation, thinks Crinella's case is overwhelming.
"Criminals ages 16 and 17 years old today, some of them
born to poor mothers between 1983 and 1984, could have received
from the government soy
formula with
enough manganese to disrupt growing brains, and
this may be why adolescents have difficulty restraining aggressive
impulses now."
Dr. Stanley van den Noort, a member of
the foundation's board, is former dean of the UC-Irvine College
of Medicine. He says, "I think the data presented at
the conference are convincing that manganese is a neurotoxin.
Newborn infants exposed to high levels of manganese may be
predisposed to neurological problems. We should exercise strong
caution in the use of soy-based formula around the world."
Naomi Baumslag, clinical professor of
pediatrics at Georgetown University Medical College and president
of the Woman's Public Health Network, tells Insight, "Only
50 percent of newborns today suckle at the mother's breast
even once. After six months, the number has fallen to only
one mother in five. Often mothers for the sake of convenience
plunk soy bottles into the infant's mouth. Why do so many
mothers in the United States imagine they have given birth
to a baby soybean instead of a human child?"
Baumslag goes further: "There
is a great deal of scientific evidence that soy formula can
be damaging to newborns, quite aside from the manganese."
She says a tablespoon of soy formula can be dangerous both
for what it does not have and for what it has.
That spoonful may be deficient in linoleic
and oleic essential fatty acids, DHA-brain-growth factor,
epidermal growth factor, lactoferrin, casomorphin and immune
factors such as IgA, neutrophils, macrophages, T-cells, B-cells
and interferon - all provided by the mother in breast milk
to defend her baby.
On the other hand, Baumslag says, that
spoonful does contain phytates, protease factors, soy lectins,
enormous amounts of phytoproteins, and genistein and daidzen,
both moderate estrogen mimics in humans.
"Why deprive the newborn infants
of perfectly good breast milk - a nutritionally superior food
in every way for the baby - and feed them soy beans?"
Baumslag asks.
Insight
Magazine