Age-related changes in gut microbiota composition from newborn to centenarian: a cross-sectional study

By T. Odamaki, Kumiko Kato, H. Sugahara, N. Hashikura, Sachiko Takahashi, Jin-zhong Xiao, F. Abe, R. Osawa. BMC Microbiology, 2016

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It has been reported that the composition of human gut microbiota changes with age; however, few studies have used molecular techniques to investigate the long-term, sequential changes in gut microbiota composition. In this study, we investigated the sequential changes in gut microbiota composition in newborn to centenarian Japanese subjects. Fecal samples from 367 healthy Japanese subjects between the ages of 0 and 104 years were analyzed by high-throughput sequencing of amplicons derived from the V3-V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. Analysis based on bacterial co-abundance groups (CAGs) defined by Kendall correlations between genera revealed that certain transition types of microbiota were enriched in infants, adults, elderly individuals and both infant and elderly subjects. More positive correlations between the relative abundances of genera were observed in the elderly-associated CAGs compared with the infant- and adult-associated CAGs. Hierarchical Ward’s linkage clustering based on the abundance of genera indicated five clusters, with median (interquartile range) ages of 3 (0–35), 33 (24–45), 42 (32–62), 77 (36–84) and 94 (86–98) years. Subjects were predominantly clustered with their matched age; however, some of them fell into mismatched age clusters. Furthermore, clustering based on the proportion of transporters predicted by phylogenetic investigation of communities by reconstruction of unobserved states (PICRUSt) showed that subjects were divided into two age-related groups, the adult-enriched and infant/elderly-enriched clusters. Notably, all the drug transporters based on Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) Orthology groups were found in the infant/elderly-enriched cluster. Our results indicate some patterns and transition points in the compositional changes in gut microbiota with age. In addition, the transporter property prediction results suggest that nutrients in the gut might play an important role in changing the gut microbiota composition with age.

Subfields: Infectious Diseases, Molecular Biology, Oncology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9979dac92cb45a3b2d945f31003ecd08fc875857

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Citations in the corpus

Short-Chain Fatty-Acid-Producing Bacteria: Key Components of the Human Gut Microbiota (2023, background): “Specifically, in early life, the microbiota evolves from being dominated by Enterobacteriaceae to being dominated by Bifidobacteriaceae while later, along with the end of breastfeeding, an increase in the abundance of Firmicutes can be observed [67,68].”
The gut microbiome: Relationships with disease and opportunities for therapy (2018, background): “In the elderly, gut microbiomes become compositionally unstable and less diverse (Odamaki et al., 2016), a phenomenon that has been linked with increasing frailty (Jackson et al.”
Blautia—a new functional genus with potential probiotic properties? (2021, background): “A crosssectional study of the stool samples of 367 healthy Japanese subjects aged 0–104 years using highthroughput sequencing of V3-V4 region of 16S rRNA gene reported that the intestinal microbiota of Japanese adults (21–69 years old) contained high abundance of Blautia and Bifidobacterium and low ”
What is the Healthy Gut Microbiota Composition? A Changing Ecosystem across Age, Environment, Diet, and Diseases (2019, background): “and an increase in Clostridium and Proteobacteria have been observed [44].”
Metabolomics for Investigating Physiological and Pathophysiological Processes. (2019, background): “Given the significant changes in the gut microflora that occur due to diet (229), lifestyle changes, or aging (352), it is little wonder that levels of different uremic toxins arising from different microbial “actors” will appear over the course of one’s lifetime.”
The Controversial Role of Human Gut Lachnospiraceae (2020, background): “However, increases in Lachnospiraceae abundances are associated with aging [19].”
The Gut Microbiota and Inflammation: An Overview (2020, background): “The patterns found in this study may be attributed to the various events that occur over the life course, including varied environmental exposures to microorganisms, occurrence of disease, hormonal changes and immune system functioning, thus complicating the influence of age on the gut microbiota [4”
The Human Gut Microbiome: From Association to Modulation. (2018, neutral): “Diversity increases after infancy and compositional shifts continue more gradually during late childhood, adolescence, and adulthood (Kundu et al., 2017; Odamaki et al., 2016).”