Mother's milk is often the sole source of nutrition for the baby. Milk also contains diverse bacterial communities -- but how to these bacteria impact the infant gut microbiome? Our latest: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
This work was led by Mattea Allert and Pamela Ferretti (@pamferretti.bsky.socialbsky.app/profile/pamf...
Check out the preprint for more information and results! And stay tuned for updates! /end
We also found significant overlap in antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) found in the mother’s breastmilk and their infant’s gut microbiome. Additionally, we found extensive carriage of ARGs in antibiotic-naive infants 💊 8/n
We found extensive carriage of antimicrobial resistance genes (ARGs) in breastmilk, as well as in the infant gut, and that samples dominated by bifidobacteria were characterised by a significantly lower carriage of ARGs. 7/n
We identified cases of strain sharing between the breastmilk and the infant gut, and we found that unrelated infants born at the same hospital were sharing a higher number of strains than infants born in different hospitals. 🏥 6/n
The prevalence of bifidobacteria decreased over time, particularly in infants that switched to formula feeding. In addition, samples dominated by B. longum showed a higher stability over time, compared to samples dominated by other species. 5/n
We found that the taxonomic overlap between breastmilk and infant gut microbiome is driven by bifidobacteria (in particular by B. longum). 4/n
We collected breastmilk (BM) and infant stool samples from 195 mother-infant pairs from different hospitals in the MN-OK area. The paper has a lot of exciting results, but here are some highlights: 3/n
This work would have not been possible without the support of my mentor @blekhman.bsky.social, my colleagues Mattea Allert, Kelsey Johnson, our wonderful collaborators Cheryl Gale, Ellen Demerath, Frank Albert, Timothy Heisel and Dan Knights, and the participants of the MILk study. 2/n