Factors influencing the infant gut microbiome at age 3-6 months: Findings from the ethnically diverse Vitamin D Antenatal Asthma Reduction Trial (VDAART).

What Was Tested

The paper reports a study of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc, published as a clinical trial.

The gut microbiome in infancy influences immune system maturation, and may have an important impact on allergic disease risk.

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 333 infants were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were infants, both men and women.

How the Study Was Run

The researchers performed 16S rRNA gene sequencing on 333 infants' stool samples.

Microbial diversity was computed using the Shannon index.

Factor analysis applied to the top 25 most abundant taxa revealed 4 underlying bacterial coabundance groups; the first dominated by Firmicutes (Lachnospiraceae/Clostridiales), the second by Proteobacteria (Klebsiella/Enterobacter), the third by Bacteriodetes, and the fourth by Veillonella.

Scores for coabundance groups were used as outcomes in regression models, with prenatal/birth and demographic characteristics as independent predictors.

Multivariate analysis, using all microbial community members, was also conducted.

What Was Measured

Topics PubMed links to this paper include Bacteria, Biodiversity, Breast Feeding, Cesarean Section, Fetal Blood, Hypersensitivity and Intestines.

The authors tagged it with the keywords C-section, Infant gut microbiome, breast-feeding and race.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc in 333 infants.

With several hundred people or more, it is a fairly large study for this kind of research.

Results are reported in around 6 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2017 (The Journal of allergy and clinical immunology), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Vitamin D, K2, Magnesium and Zinc compound page, all human trials.