Results from three different groups of investigators in Taiwan and China suggest that malamine in infant formulas may cause kidney stones in children who drink  high malamine containing formula as infants. These findings were recently made available online by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Melamine is a nitrogen based man-made chemical that is found in fertilizers and in other industrial and consumer goods including resins and some cleaners. Last year it was discovered that melamine had been added to foods from China including many types of infant formula sold in the United States. It was discovered that melamine was added to products in order to artificially increase the amount of available protein measured in the food which is then reported to regulators and on labels.

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been monitoring formula and continues to monitor foods for melamine. Several foods have been recalled for melamine exposure and all infant formula produced in China. Many U.S. produced infant formulas have been shown to contain melamine but not at the levels of the formulas produced in China.

Published in the New England Journal of Medicine was a study by Guan and colleagues who studied 589 children in and around Beijing who were screened for kidney stones using ultrasound. Also published were letters from Ho and colleagues and Wang and colleagues about  hundreds of children studied in Hong Kong and Taipei who also had kidney ultrasounds. All of the investigators looked at the association between melamine exposure from the infant formula consumed by these children as infants and the development of kidney stones -- a condition also known as nephrolithiasis. Investigators from Beijing and Taiwan noted strong associations between increased melamine exposure from formula and kidney stones with both noting that one to two out of every ten children with high exposures to melemine during infancy developing stones. Researchers in Hong Kong noted a similar trend but results were less striking.

Consumers can avoid melamine exposure by avoiding foods known to have high levels of melamine including recalled items produced by Topaz, G&J, Wonderfarm, YiLI, Mr. Brown's and others. The FDA keeps an updated list of all of these products. While it remains unclear what the levels of melamine are in many U.S. produced infant formulas, some manufacturers, including Earth's Best Organic and Hain Celestial have reported that their products have been tested to be melamine free.

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