How Safe Is Soy Infant Formula?(high levels of manganese in soy formula)
Date: 06/25/2001; Publication: Insight on the News; Author: Goodman, David

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.

Jonathon Ericson, an environmental-health scientist at the University of California-Irvine, faced a typical planner's task when he was called upon to set up a symposium on toxic metals last fall. How would he frame the topics? What should be included? Whom would he invite to speak? It didn't seem that difficult: He would focus on pollutants the internal-combustion engine spews into the air. Day one would be devoted to the tetraethyl-lead compound in antiknock gasolines that discharges metallic wastes out of the tailpipe. An easy one.

Day two he would devote to MMT, the antiknock compound of the future, based not upon lead but manganese. Here his thoughts moved to likely speakers to detail the dangers to the brain structure of manganese miners in Europe, Asia, South America and Australia, who after a few years on the job have been shown to run an increased risk for Parkinson's disease. The miners inhale manganese particles that, after being breathed into the lungs, are transported to the brain.

Then it occurred to him: Miners aren't the only people at risk from too much manganese. Ericson remembered the dangers of the toxic metal in a consumer product that has been popular for about 30 years -- that standby of busy mothers the world over, soybean-based infant formula.

Ericson's use of the image of soy-based formula as a toxic threat comparable to a gasoline additive kept the audience captivated. The two speakers, Dr. Francis Crinella, clinical professor of pediatrics at UC-Irvine, and Trinh Tran, a graduate researcher at the UC-Davis Department of Animal Studies, explained 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 tells Insight 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.

Dr. Barbara J. Stoecker of the Human Environmental Sciences Center at Oklahoma State University served on the FDA's Dietary Recommendations for Infants Committee. She tells Insight the committee was given instructions to limit the target to breastfed infants only. Since they were told the FDA lacked data on the need of infants 0-6 months old for manganese, they employed data from the 7-12 months age group, which in turn was extrapolated from adult values according to a body/weight equation. The result was the current recommendation, as compared with the 0.005 mg in human mother's milk. Stoecker says she was puzzled by the absence of guidelines for maximum amounts of manganese permitted.

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 Lonnerdal 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, Lonnerdal 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. Lonnerdal 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).

John Donaldson, a toxicologist who was a speaker at the UC-Irvine conference, pinpointed a biochemical lesion in basal ganglia waylaid by manganese. He reported how manganese in the brain can elevate its electrical charge, increasing the metal's virulence tenfold and attacking the vulnerable neurons that function as transmitters for the key brain chemical dopamine. Damage to these dopamine cells in the basal ganglia, as shown by last year's Nobel Prize winner in medicine, Arvid Carlsson, is symptomatic of Parkinson's disease.

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. He had been alerted by earlier work by UC-Irvine psychiatrist Louis Gottschalk, who had detected elevated manganese in scalp hair of youths convicted of felony crimes and incarcerated in four Southern California prisons. He wondered whether the metal had anything to do with child hyperactivity since that syndrome has been attributed to a disturbance in the basal ganglia.

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 got in touch with Lonnerdal and Tran and designed a research project to test for behavioral and brain disorders. They chose rat pups fed manganese during the first 18 days. Divided into four groups, the pups suckled on their mothers' breasts and then received by mircopipette an additional dose of manganese salt dissolved in water. The doses corresponded to the amounts of manganese found in rat breast milk (0.05 mg) and comparable to brands of soy-based infant formula ranging between 0.25 mg and 0.50 mg as sold in pharmacies. The control group received just sugar water.

Dosed with manganese salt for 18 consecutive days and also fed mother's milk, the rat pups were returned to their cages and left undisturbed until 50 days of age. Then, through day 64, they were tested behaviorally for evidence of disability. On day 65, the rats were sacrificed, their brains removed from the skull and sent to biochemists who dissected the upper regions of the basal ganglia, analyzing in the neurochemical lab for dopamine levels.

When Tran had tested the rats for behavior disorders, they showed an inverse relationship between the manganese given and scores on behavioral tests. The rodents given high amounts of manganese didn't do as well on maze and shock-avoidance tests as those given the lesser amounts.

Crinella's data 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 unleashed 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."

However, Keen warns against premature generalization. He says young rats appear more susceptible than human babies to manganese toxicity. He points out that the rats absorb 80 to 85 percent of the manganese they ingest, while human infants at 6 months are closer to 35 percent.

A dissenting opinion about soy dangers also comes from John Lasekan, a pediatric nutritionist at Ross Products, producers of the leading brand, Isomil. While declining to talk to Insight, he supplied his published research asserting that manganese is a trace metal absolutely essential for life and that premature and low-birth-weight infants may be at risk for developing a manganese deficiency. He says soy-based formulas support normal growth and normal plasma biochemistry, comparable to infants fed human milk during the first two weeks of life.

Mardi Mountford, a spokesman for the industry's International Formula Council, based in Atlanta, adds: "There are no reports of manganese toxicity in healthy infants fed soy formula. Parents can be assured that infant soy formulas are safe and nutritious feeding options for their infants."

Yet, others are not so sure. 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.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Manganese Poisoning Attacks the Brain

Neurology textbooks long have identified manganese as a neurotoxic metal. In 1817 an English physician named J. Couper noted that some workers in a manganese mill appeared lethargic and their faces unexpressive.

By the turn of the 20th century, the disease of "manganism" had been described in medical journals, particularly striking miners exposed to toxic dust. It appeared to cause emotional liability, irrationality, hallucinations and impulsivity. Chronic exposure produced more severe symptoms of muscular weakness, difficulty in walking, tremors, immobile facial expression and speech disturbances -- symptoms reminiscent today of Parkinson's disease, and even then reportedly affecting 1 million people.

Today, neurologists report that sufferers of this Parkinson's-like disease, is the consequence of accumulating large amounts of manganese in a circumscribed region of the brain. Among humans, monkeys, rabbits and rats, the primary site of manganese toxicity regardless of the route for exposure -- whether by mouth, inhalation, injection or intravenous tube --is a mass of nervous tissue buried deep within the cerebral hemispheres. That tissue is known as the basal ganglia, part of the extrapyramidal system in the brain and spinal cord controlling body movement. The neuronal damage caused by the manganese can be more extensive in young, immature animals than in adults.

-- DG

David Goodman is a neuroscientist and science writer whose popular writings feature information on healthy brain development and its enemies.

Original Source Can be found at: http://www.insightmag.com/news/2001/06/25/SpecialReport/How-Safe.Is.Soy.Infant.Formula-161117.shtml

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