Microbes in Infant Gut Development: Placing Abundance Within Environmental, Clinical and Growth Parameters

Abstract

Sound and timely microbial gut colonization completes newborn’s healthy metabolic programming and manifests in infant appropriate growth and weight development. Feces, collected at 3, 30, and 90 days after birth from 60 breastfed Slovenian newborns, was submitted to microbial DNA extraction and qPCR quantification of selected gut associated taxa. Multivariate regression analysis was applied to evaluate microbial dynamics with respect to infant demographic, environmental, clinical characteristics and first year growth data. Early microbial variability was marked by the proportion of Bacilli, but diminished and converged in later samples, as bifidobacteria started to prevail. The first month proportions of enterococci were associated with maternity hospital locality and supplementation of breastfeeding with formulae, while Enterococcus faecalis proportion reflected the mode of delivery. Group Bacteroides-Prevotella proportion was associated with infant weight and ponderal index at first month. Infant mixed feeding pattern and health issues within the first month revealed the most profound and extended microbial perturbations. Our findings raise concerns over the ability of the early feeding supplementation to emulate and support the gut microbiota in a way similar to the exclusively breastfed infants. Additionally, practicing supplementation beyond the first month also manifested in higher first year weight and weight gain Z-score.

Microbiota of newborn calves and their mothers reveals possible transfer routes for newborn calves’ gastrointestinal microbiota

“…As shown by qPCR, copy numbers increased significantly between 6 and 24 hours p . n ., as has also be seen in calves [2] as well as in humans [33].…”

Endo-1,3(4)-β-Glucanase-Treatment of Oat β-Glucan Enhances Fermentability by Infant Fecal Microbiota, Stimulates Dectin-1 Activation and Attenuates Inflammatory Responses in Immature Dendritic Cells

“…With these age groups, substantial production of SCFAs was also observed, which indicates that the fecal microbiota of 9–15-month-old infants are capable of degrading native oat β-glucan. It is therefore likely that differences in Enterococcus on species level upon aging [ 44 , 45 ] result in the availability of different sets of enzymes for the degradation of β-glucans for infants of different age groups. Our findings suggest that the bacteria and their enzymes which are responsible for the degradation of β-glucans are not yet present the first weeks after birth, but are introduced over time.…”

Three-Month Feeding Integration With Bifidobacterium Strains Prevents Gastrointestinal Symptoms in Healthy Newborns

“…Feeding type is known to have a crucial role in shaping the infant intestinal microbiota ( 25 , 48 ). Our study shows that, at the enrolment, when 7–15 days of breast- or bottle-feeding had already been done, some differences were present in the groups with different feeding type: total enterobacteria and E. coli counts were higher in bottle-fed than in breast-fed newborns, also when corrected for confounders.…”