Age and Mothers: Potent Influences of Children’s Skin Microbiota

Abstract

The evolution of a child’s skin microbiome is associated with the development of the immune system and skin environment. As only few studies have analyzed the microbiota in young children, we investigated changes in the skin microbiota of children (158 subjects; ≤10 years old) and compared the microbiota structures between children and their mothers using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing. Sample location and age were the primary factors determining a child’s skin bacterial composition, which differed significantly among the face, ventral forearm, and calf. Relative abundances of Streptococcus and Granulicatella were negatively correlated with age, and the alpha diversity at all body sites examined increased during the first 10 years of life, especially on the face. The facial bacterial composition of 10-year-old children was strongly associated with delivery mode at birth. Among mother-child pairs (50 pairs), the relative abundances of most bacterial genera in children were more similar to those of their own mothers than those of unrelated women. The data indicated that age and site were significantly associated with microbial composition and that maternal factors determine the child’s microbiome. Further research is needed to characterize the effects of maturation of the infant microbiome on health in adulthood.

Impact of the early-life skin microbiota on the development of canine atopic dermatitis in a high-risk breed birth cohort

“…Previous studies also found Streptococcus 19 and Porphyromonas 19,31 among the dominant genera of the bacterial cutaneous microbiota in healthy dogs. Interestingly, a recent study of the bacterial skin microbiota of children and their mothers, noted that the genus Streptococcus was more abundant in the early-life microbiota 32 , like in our study. In earlier studies using culture-based methods, Acinetobacter was among the most common commensal bacteria isolated from the skin of healthy dogs and in was present in at least 50% of healthy dogs in a study using amplicon sequencing 26 .…”

“…A similar observation was made in a previous study targeting V1-V3 26 that described Cutibacterium as predominant in axilla, but not in groin samples. On the human skin, Cutibacterium is moreover positively correlated with age and thus less abundant in the early-life microbiota 32 . It would be interesting to assess the development of the canine skin in a longitudinal study to corroborate such differences.…”

“…Differences between bitches and puppies and stud dogs and puppies were observed for the cutaneous bacterial microbiota, but not between bitches and stud dogs. For the human skin it was recently described that differences between mothers and their children may be due to the immune maturation which is linked to hormonal changes 32 . This may furthermore explain differences driven by the sex of the dogs as described in an earlier study in older dogs 29 .…”

A Mother’s Touch: Emerging Roles in Development of the Cutaneous Microbiome

“…Site-specific tropism has been shown down to a strain-level, indicating colonization competition occurring even at high phylogenetic resolution, which may have important implications for the development of therapeutics (Byrd et al, 2018;Conlan et al, 2012). Employing 16S ribosomal RNA amplicon sequencing, Zhu et al (2019) analyzed swabs obtained from face (cheek), central calf, and ventral forearm skin of 158 children and 50 mothers randomly selected from the cohort. Although Zhu et al (2019) found decreased facial diversity compared with other skin sites, this was only significant in 1-year-old children.…”

“…The cutaneous microbiome is home to a commensal population of approximately 1 Â 10 10 bacteria per 1.8 m 2 , which guards against the invasion of pathogens and breaks down natural products (Byrd et al, 2018;Zhu et al, 2019). Emerging evidence suggests that early microbial exposure may be critical to immune homeostasis and long-term health outcomes.…”