The establishment of micronutrient requirements for infants remains a challenge. For healthy full-term infants, breast milk is an appropriate standard for virtually all nutrients. In contrast, guidelines for infants who are not healthy, and infants who are bom preterm, are much more tenuous. Although micronutrient research in preterm infants has a long history, most of it has focused on biochemical or nutrient balance outcomes. Much less is known about clinical disease outcomes related to most micronutrients. Approximately 12 of infants in the United States are bom preterm, and approx1.5 are bom with very low birth weight. For this substantial group of high-risk infants, a lack of micronutrient intake recommendations, and more importantly, lack of outcome data on which to base any recommendations, is a major gap. Dietary guidelines for micronutrients in preterm infants have often been established by working groups or individual authors (1).
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