Nutritional requirements of extremely low birthweight infants.

Extremely low birthweight (ELBW) infants are unique in many developmental characteristics that determine nutritional requirements, including: low energy reserves (both carbohydrate and fat); higher metabolic rate (intrinsically, due to a higher body content of more metabolically active organs, e.g. brain, heart, liver); higher protein turnover rate (especially when growing); higher glucose needs for energy and brain metabolism; higher lipid needs to match the in utero rate of fat deposition, and for essential fatty acids for brain, neural and vascular development; excessive evaporative rates, and occasionally very high urinary water and solute losses; low rates of gastrointestinal peristalsis; limited production of gut digestive enzymes and growth factors; high incidence of stressful events (e.g. hypoxemia, respiratory distress, sepsis); and abnormal neurological outcome if not fed adequately. Postnatally, ELBW infants do not grow well, or at all, often for weeks. This leads to a virtual "growth deficit", which has unknown consequences (which for the most part are not good) and requires excessive feeding later on to catch up to normal growth rates and body composition. The major future challenge for the nutrition of these infants is to define more accurately their nutritional requirements, particularly in the early postnatal period, in order to feed them more appropriately, to reduce to a minimum the nutritional and growth deficits that they so commonly develop and to prevent neurodevelopmental handicaps that are the result of nutritional deficiencies.