Contact with caregivers is associated with composition of the infant gastrointestinal microbiome in the first 6 months of life

Abstract

ObjectivesLittle is known about how physical contact at birth and early caregiving environments influence the colonization of the infant gastrointestinal microbiome. We investigated how infant contact with caregivers at birth and within the first 2 weeks of life relates to the composition of the gastrointestinal microbiome in a sample of U.S. infants (n = 60).MethodsSkin‐to‐skin and physical contact with caregivers at birth and early caregiving environments were surveyed at 2 weeks postpartum. Stool samples were collected from infants at 2 weeks, 2, 6, and 12 months of age and underwent 16S rRNA sequencing as a proxy for the gastrointestinal microbiome. Associations between early caregiving environments and alpha and beta diversity, and differential abundance of bacteria at the genus level were assessed using PERMANOVA, and negative binomial mixed models in DEseq2.ResultsTime in physical contact with caregivers explained 10% of variation in beta diversity at 2 weeks' age. The number of caregivers in the first few weeks of life explained 9% of variation in beta diversity at 2 weeks and the number of individuals in physical contact at birth explained 11% of variation in beta diversity at 6 months. Skin‐to‐skin contact on the day of birth was positively associated with the abundance of eight genera. Infants held for by more individuals had greater abundance of eight genera.DiscussionResults reveal a potential mechanism (skin‐to‐skin and physical contact) by which caregivers influence the infant gastrointestinal microbiome. Our findings contribute to work exploring the social transmission of microbes.

Examining associations among caregiver stress, social support, and the infant gut microbiome

“…This system is sensitive to environmental influences, especially in the first three to four years of life, which are thought to be a critical period in the colonization of the gut microbiota and the development of connections between the gut microbiota and the brain, known as the microbiota-gut-brain axis (Cowan et al, 2020). Social aspects of the early environment in particular have demonstrated associations with the gut microbiome in a few studies, including household composition (Brito et al, 2019;Stewart et al, 2018), daycare attendance (Amir et al, 2022;Roslund et al, 2020), caregiver stress/mental health (Dutton et al, 2023;Galley et al, 2023;Jahnke et al, 2021), pandemic-related social changes (Querdasi, Vogel, et al, 2023), caregiving practices (Flannery et al, 2020;Wiley et al, 2023), and socioeconomic status (Flannery et al, 2020;Lapidot et al, 2022). Taken together, available evidence suggests that aspects of caregiver well-being in infancy, including stress and social support, may play an important role in the developing infant gut microbiota.…”