BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518083, China.
China National GeneBank, BGI-Shenzhen, Shenzhen, 518120, China.
Microbiome. 2019 Jan 4;7(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s40168-018-0608-z.
The gut microbiota evolves from birth and is in early life influenced by events such as birth mode, type of infant feeding, and maternal and infant antibiotics use. However, we still have a gap in our understanding of gut microbiota development in older children, and to what extent early events and pre-school lifestyle modulate the composition of the gut microbiota, and how this impinges on whole body metabolic regulation in school-age children.
Taking advantage of the KOALA Birth Cohort Study, a long-term prospective birth cohort in the Netherlands with extensive collection of high-quality host metadata, we applied shotgun metagenomics sequencing and systematically investigated the gut microbiota of children at 6-9 years of age. We demonstrated an overall adult-like gut microbiota in the 281 Dutch school-age children and identified 3 enterotypes dominated by the genera Bacteroides, Prevotella, and Bifidobacterium, respectively. Importantly, we found that breastfeeding duration in early life and pre-school dietary lifestyle correlated with the composition and functional competences of the gut microbiota in the children at school age. The correlations between pre-school dietary lifestyle and metabolic phenotypes exhibited a striking enterotype dependency. Thus, an inverse correlation between high dietary fiber consumption and low plasma insulin levels was only observed in individuals with the Bacteroides and Prevotella enterotypes, but not in Bifidobacterium enterotype individuals in whom the gut microbiota displayed overall lower microbial gene richness, alpha-diversity, functional potential for complex carbohydrate fermentation, and butyrate and succinate production. High total fat consumption and elevated plasma free fatty acid levels in the Bifidobacterium enterotype are associated with the co-occurrence of Streptococcus.
Our work highlights the persistent effects of breastfeeding duration and pre-school dietary lifestyle in affecting the gut microbiota in school-age children and reveals distinct compositional and functional potential in children according to enterotypes. The findings underscore enterotype-specific links between the host metabolic phenotypes and dietary patterns, emphasizing the importance of microbiome-based stratification when investigating metabolic responses to diets. Future diet intervention studies are clearly warranted to examine gut microbe-diet-host relationships to promote knowledge-based recommendations in relation to improving metabolic health in children.
肠道微生物群从出生开始演变，并在生命早期受到出生方式、婴儿喂养类型以及母婴抗生素使用等因素的影响。然而，我们对于年长儿童肠道微生物群的发展仍存在认识上的差距，也不知道早期事件和学前生活方式在多大程度上调节了肠道微生物群的组成，以及这如何影响学龄儿童的全身代谢调节。
利用 KOALA 出生队列研究，这是一项在荷兰进行的长期前瞻性出生队列研究，广泛收集高质量的宿主元数据，我们应用了 shotgun 宏基因组测序，并系统地研究了 281 名荷兰学龄儿童的肠道微生物群。我们在这些 281 名荷兰学龄儿童中发现了一种整体上类似于成人的肠道微生物群，并确定了 3 种以拟杆菌属、普雷沃氏菌属和双歧杆菌属为主导的肠型。重要的是，我们发现，生命早期的母乳喂养时间和学前饮食生活方式与儿童在学龄期的肠道微生物群的组成和功能能力相关。学前饮食生活方式与代谢表型之间的相关性表现出明显的肠型依赖性。因此，高膳食纤维摄入与低血浆胰岛素水平之间的负相关仅在具有拟杆菌属和普雷沃氏菌属肠型的个体中观察到，但在双歧杆菌属肠型个体中则没有观察到，因为双歧杆菌属肠型个体的肠道微生物群总体上显示出较低的微生物基因丰富度、α多样性、复杂碳水化合物发酵的功能潜力以及丁酸和琥珀酸的产生。双歧杆菌属肠型中高总脂肪摄入和血浆游离脂肪酸水平升高与链球菌的共存有关。
我们的工作强调了母乳喂养时间和学前饮食生活方式对学龄儿童肠道微生物群的持续影响，并揭示了根据肠型儿童的不同组成和功能潜力。这些发现强调了宿主代谢表型和饮食模式之间的肠型特异性联系，突出了在研究饮食对代谢的反应时基于微生物组的分层的重要性。显然需要进行未来的饮食干预研究，以研究肠道微生物群-饮食-宿主关系，从而为改善儿童代谢健康提供基于知识的建议。
