Maturation of the Infant Microbiome Community Structure and Function Across Multiple Body Sites and in Relation to Mode of Delivery

By Derrick M. Chu, Jun Ma, Amanda L Prince, K. Antony, Maxim D. Seferovic, Kjersti Aagaard. Nature Medicine, 2017

912 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Human microbial communities are characterized by their taxonomic, metagenomic and metabolic diversity, which varies by distinct body sites and influences human physiology. However, when and how microbial communities within each body niche acquire unique taxonomical and functional signatures in early life remains underexplored. We thus sought to determine the taxonomic composition and potential metabolic function of the neonatal and early infant microbiota across multiple body sites and assess the effect of the mode of delivery and its potential confounders or modifiers. A cohort of pregnant women in their early third trimester (n = 81) were prospectively enrolled for longitudinal sampling through 6 weeks after delivery, and a second matched cross-sectional cohort (n = 81) was additionally recruited for sampling once at the time of delivery. Samples across multiple body sites, including stool, oral gingiva, nares, skin and vagina were collected for each maternal–infant dyad. Whole-genome shotgun sequencing and sequencing analysis of the gene encoding the 16S rRNA were performed to interrogate the composition and function of the neonatal and maternal microbiota. We found that the neonatal microbiota and its associated functional pathways were relatively homogeneous across all body sites at delivery, with the notable exception of the neonatal meconium. However, by 6 weeks after delivery, the infant microbiota structure and function had substantially expanded and diversified, with the body site serving as the primary determinant of the composition of the bacterial community and its functional capacity. Although minor variations in the neonatal (immediately at birth) microbiota community structure were associated with the cesarean mode of delivery in some body sites (oral gingiva, nares and skin; R2 = 0.038), this was not true for neonatal stool (meconium; Mann–Whitney P > 0.05), and there was no observable difference in community function regardless of delivery mode. For infants at 6 weeks of age, the microbiota structure and function had expanded and diversified with demonstrable body site specificity (P < 0.001, R2 = 0.189) but without discernable differences in community structure or function between infants delivered vaginally or by cesarean surgery (P = 0.057, R2 = 0.007). We conclude that within the first 6 weeks of life, the infant microbiota undergoes substantial reorganization, which is primarily driven by body site and not by mode of delivery.

Subfields: Epidemiology, Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1044e35ba36631843c62f8275b94713360eb24df

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Citations in the corpus

The Gut Microbiota and Inflammation: An Overview (2020, background): “Additionally, intrapartum antibiotic use during casesarian section is shown to affect the neonatal gut microbiota [31].”
ggtern: Ternary Diagrams Using ggplot2 (2018, neutral): “…and ﬁelds, including for example, works by Witte, Bradley, Enright, and Muljo (2015), Milani, Ghiselli, Pecci, Maurizii, and Passamonti (2015); Wenger, Buzgariu, and Galliot (2016); Kalenitchenko et al. (2016); Chu, Ma, Prince, Antony, Seferovic, and Aagaard (2017) and Nesbitt et al. (2017).”
Factors affecting the composition of the gut microbiota, and its modulation (2019, background): “, 2016), autoimmune diseases (Chu et al., 2017), cardiovascular disease (Cui et al.”
The gut microbiome: Relationships with disease and opportunities for therapy (2018, background): “According to a recent study of infant microbiome development at multiple body sites, microbial niche specificity is evident as early as 6 wk of age (Chu et al., 2017), implicating early life factors in shaping niche-specific microbial assembly in infancy.”
The Human Gut Microbiome: From Association to Modulation. (2018, neutral): “, 2016), but more recent evidence with regard to longer-term effects is mixed (Chu et al., 2017; Falony et al., 2016).”
The Human Microbiome and Child Growth - First 1000 Days and Beyond. (2019, background): “For example, the inheritance of starch utilization genes and bile acid metabolism genes, which may differ between individuals, likely plays an essential role in nutrient absorption and hence growth in early life [9,44].”
The First Microbial Colonizers of the Human Gut: Composition, Activities, and Health Implications of the Infant Gut Microbiota (2017, background): “Typical factors that can hamper the process of microbiota maturation are premature birth as well as formula feeding, undernutrition, and antibiotic use (2, 73, 83, 454).”