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Medicine and Health Sciences
Pediatrics

Early Development of Intestinal Microbiota

Profile image of JOSE CARLOS PARRAGA SAAVEDRAJOSE CARLOS PARRAGA SAAVEDRA

2012, Gastroenterology Clinics of North America

https://doi.org/10.1016/J.GTC.2012.08.001
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Abstract

Early acquisition and maintenance of a healthy intestinal microbiota is critical to the longterm health of the host; and the mechanisms through which this occurs are beginning to be elucidated. Factors that lead to alterations in microbial composition during infancy are associated with inadequate and inappropriate host immune responses, which lead to the development of disease. A greater understanding of these factors and of these mechanisms will unlock potential strategies to modulate the acquisition and maintenance of a human microbiota that maintains and promotes health. These strategies will be critical in battling the epidemic of noncommunicable immunerelated diseases encountered in the modern world.

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Robin Lorenz

Journal of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition, 2010

Objectives-Therapy with broad-spectrum antibiotics is a common practice for premature infants. This treatment can reduce the biodiversity of the fecal microbiota and may be a factor in the cause of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). In contrast, probiotic treatment of premature infants reduces the incidence of NEC. We hypothesized that one mechanism for these observations is the influence of bacteria on postnatal development of the mucosal immune system.

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Early Development of the Gut Microbiota and Immune Health
M. Pilar Francino

Pathogens, 2014

In recent years, the increase in human microbiome research brought about by the rapidly evolving "omic" technologies has established that the balance among the microbial groups present in the human gut, and their multipronged interactions with the host, are crucial for health. On the other hand, epidemiological and experimental support has also grown for the 'early programming hypothesis', according to which factors that act in utero and early in life program the risks for adverse health outcomes later on. The microbiota of the gut develops during infancy, in close interaction with immune development, and with extensive variability across individuals. It follows that the specific process of gut colonization and the microbe-host interactions established in an individual during this period have the potential to represent main determinants of lifelong propensity to immune disease. Although much remains to be learnt on the progression of events by which the gut microbiota becomes established and initiates its intimate relationships with the host, and on the long-term repercussions of this process, recent works have advanced significatively in this direction.

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Development of intestinal microbiota in infants and its impact on health
Françoise Le Vacon

Trends in Microbiology, 2013

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Nurturing the Early Life Gut Microbiome and Immune Maturation for Long Term Health
Norbert Sprenger

Microorganisms, 2021

Early life is characterized by developmental milestones such as holding up the head, turning over, sitting up and walking that are typically achieved sequentially in specific time windows. Similarly, the early gut microbiome maturation can be characterized by specific temporal microorganism acquisition, colonization and selection with differential functional features over time. This orchestrated microbial sequence occurs from birth during the first years of age before the microbiome reaches an adult-like composition and function between 3 and 5 years of age. Increasingly, these different steps of microbiome development are recognized as crucial windows of opportunity for long term health, primarily linked to appropriate immune and metabolic development. For instance, microbiome disruptors such as preterm and Cesarean-section birth, malnutrition and antibiotic use are associated with increased risk to negatively affect long-term immune and metabolic health. Different age discriminant...

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Related topics

  • Medicine
  • Bottle Feeding
  • Gut Flora
  • Crohn Disease

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    Gut microbiota analysis reveals a marked shift to bifidobacteria by a starter infant formula containing a synbiotic of bovine milk-derived oligosaccharides and Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis CNCM I-3446
    Norbert Sprenger

    Environmental Microbiology, 2015

    Non-digestible milk oligosaccharides were proposed as receptor decoys for pathogens and as nutrients for beneficial gut commensals like bifidobacteria. Bovine milk contains oligosaccharides, some of which are structurally identical or similar to those found in human milk. In a controlled, randomized doubleblinded clinical trial we tested the effect of feeding a formula supplemented with a mixture of bovine milkderived oligosaccharides (BMOS) generated from whey permeate, containing galacto-oligosaccharides and 3'-and 6'-sialyllactose, and the probiotic Bifidobacterium animalis subsp. lactis (B. lactis) strain CNCM I-3446. Breastfed infants served as reference group. Compared with a non-supplemented control formula, the test formula showed a similar tolerability and supported a similar growth in healthy newborns followed for 12 weeks. The control, but not the test group, differed from the breast-fed reference group by a higher faecal pH and a significantly higher diversity of the faecal microbiota. In the test group the probiotic B. lactis increased by 100-fold in the stool and was detected in all supplemented infants. BMOS stimulated a marked shift to a bifidobacteriumdominated faecal microbiota via increases in endogenous bifidobacteria

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    Human Microbiome Acquisition and Bioinformatic Challenges in Metagenomic Studies
    Valeria D'Argenio

    International journal of molecular sciences, 2018

    The study of the human microbiome has become a very popular topic. Our microbial counterpart, in fact, appears to play an important role in human physiology and health maintenance. Accordingly, microbiome alterations have been reported in an increasing number of human diseases. Despite the huge amount of data produced to date, less is known on how a microbial dysbiosis effectively contributes to a specific pathology. To fill in this gap, other approaches for microbiome study, more comprehensive than 16S rRNA gene sequencing, i.e., shotgun metagenomics and metatranscriptomics, are becoming more widely used. Methods standardization and the development of specific pipelines for data analysis are required to contribute to and increase our understanding of the human microbiome relationship with health and disease status.

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    Gut Health in the era of the Human Gut Microbiota: from metaphor to biovalue
    Vincent Baty

    Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 2014

    The human intestinal ecosystem, previously called the gut microflora is now known as the Human Gut Microbiota (HGM). Microbiome research has emphasized the potential role of this ecosystem in human homeostasis, offering unexpected opportunities in therapeutics, far beyond digestive diseases. It has also highlighted ethical, social and commercial concerns related to the gut microbiota. As diet factors are accepted to be the major regulator of the gut microbiota, the modulation of its composition, either by antibiotics or by food intake, should be regarded as a fascinating tool for improving the human health. Scientists, the food industry, consumers and policymakers alike are involved in this new field of nutrition. Defining how knowledge about the HGM is being translated into public perception has never been addressed before. This raises the question of metaphors associated with the HGM, and how they could be used to improve public understanding, and to influence individual decision-making on healthcare policy. This article suggests that a meeting of stakeholders from the social sciences, basic research and the food industry, taking an epistemological approach to the HGM, is needed to foster close, innovative partnerships that will help shape public perception and enable novel behavioural interventions that would benefit public health.

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    The Prenatal Microbiome: A New Player for Human Health
    Valeria D'Argenio

    High-Throughput, 2018

    The last few years have featured an increasing interest in the study of the human microbiome and its correlations with health status. Indeed, technological advances have allowed the study of microbial communities to reach a previously unthinkable sensitivity, showing the presence of microbes also in environments usually considered as sterile. In this scenario, microbial communities have been described in the amniotic fluid, the umbilical blood cord, and the placenta, denying a dogma of reproductive medicine that considers the uterus like a sterile womb. This prenatal microbiome may play a role not only in fetal development but also in the predisposition to diseases that may develop later in life, and also in adulthood. Thus, the aim of this review is to report the current knowledge regarding the prenatal microbiome composition, its association with pathological processes, and the future perspectives regarding its manipulation for healthy status promotion and maintenance.

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    From Intrauterine to Extrauterine Life—The Role of Endogenous and Exogenous Factors in the Regulation of the Intestinal Microbiota Community and Gut Maturation in Early Life
    Anna Socha-Banasiak

    Frontiers in Nutrition, 2021

    Differentiation of the digestive tube and formation of the gut unit as a whole, are regulated by environmental factors through epigenetic modifications which enhance cellular plasticity. The critical period of DNA imprinting lasts from conception until approximately the 1,000th day of human life. During pregnancy, besides agents that may directly promote epigenetic programming (e.g., folate, zinc, and choline supplementation), some factors (e.g., antibiotic use, dietary components) can affect the composition of the mother's microbiota, in turn affecting the fetal microbiome which interacts with the offspring's intestinal epithelial cells. According to available literature that confirms intrauterine microbial colonization, the impact of the microbiome and its metabolites on the genome seems to be key in fetal development, including functional gut maturation and the general health status of the offspring, as well as later on in life. Although the origin of the fetal microbiome...

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