The decision by the US Food and Drug Administration to allow the fortification of baby food and infant formula has led to a raft of new products in recent months.
This week is no exception, with Ross Products, a division of Abbot Laboratories, announcing the launch of a pre-term infant formula containing two fatty acids which are important for brain and eye development.
NeoSure will be launched sometime later this year, and contains DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and ARA (arachidonic acid), both of which are found in small amounts in breast milk.
Ross said it had conducted extensive clinical research on the use of DHA and ARA in infant formulas, and cited a study published last year in the journal Pediatrics (108:359-371, 2001) which showed that infants fed with its pre-term formulas supplemented with DHA and ARA showed improvement on a standard test of visual development.
Ross recently introduced Similac Advance with Iron for term infants, an infant formula that contains DHA and ARA. A similar product supplemented with AHA and DHA, Enfamil LIPIL, was launched by Mead Johnson earlier this year.