What is DHA?
Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is an essential fatty acid [long chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LC-PUFA)] that is essential for brain development.

How does DHA act?
LC-PUFA are essential parts of phospholipids. Phospholipids are membranes of brain cells. Thus DHA plays important role in brain development. Premature babies have insufficient DHA due to low fat reserve and it has been found that in preterm babies; giving DHA improved visual attention and cognitive development. Also improved developmental scores at 18 months of age have been reported for infants fed DHA.

Why is DHA required during growing period?
There is a growth spurt in the human brain during last part of pregnancy and initial few months of life with a large increase in brain content of DHA and associated with improved cognitive development. DHA is also a major component of the retina of the eye and thus associated with improved visual activity.

Breast milk is a good source of DHA and it has been found that breast fed infants have a higher IQ score as compared with children who receive infant formula that do not contain LC-PUFA but there no difference in physical growth.

What are good sources of DHA?
Breast milk is a good source of DHA and is related to mother’s long term dietary intake and for breast fed infants DHA is supplied from breast milk. If a baby is on infant formula then 0.2% of total fatty acids should be DHA. In preterm babies, an infant formula that provides at least 0.35% DHA is required.

What are other beneficial effects of DHA?
It has been found that mothers whose children were found to be allergic had lower levels of DHA in their breast milk as compared to milk from mothers of non-allergic children. Also a number of studies have shown that consumption of food such as fish oil that contains DHA is associated with decreased risk of heart attacks.

Are there any side effects of DHA?
No adverse effects of DHA have been noted when supplemented to formula. However, proper balance between DHA and other LC-PUFA such as arachidonic acid (AA) in the formula is required as they have different effects on the same enzyme. Thus for a preterm infant, AA: DHA ratio should be 1.5 with DHA content of 0.4%. In healthy infants, formula should contain 0.2% of DHA and 0.35% of AA of total fatty acids.

1.		Fleith M, Clandinin MT. Dietary PUFA for preterm and term infants: review of clinical studies. Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr 2005;45:205-229.
2.		Agostoni C, Giovannini M. Cognitive and visual development: influence of differences in breast and formula fed infants. Nutr Health 2001;15:183-188.
3.		Duchen K, Casas R, Fageras-Bottcher M, Yu G, Bjorksten B. Human milk polyunsaturated long chain fatty acids and secretory immunoglobulin A antibodies and early childhood allergy. Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2000;11:29-39.