Skip to main content

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Nutr.
Sec. Nutrition, Psychology and Brain Health
Volume 10 - 2023 | doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1294549
This article is part of the Research Topic

Impact of Gut Microbiota on Neurogenesis and Neurological Diseases During Early Life

View all 6 Articles

Infant Gut Microbiome relationships with childhood behavioral scales: a pilot study

Samia Valeria Ozorio Dutra1* Anujit Sarkar2 Ji Youn Yoo2 Emily Shaffer-Hudkins3 Maureen Groer2
  • 1University of Hawaii, United States
  • 2The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, United States
  • 3University of South Florida, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Receive an email when it is updated
You just subscribed to receive the final version of the article

Introduction:Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) infants, born weighing less than 1500 grams, are at risk for both gut dysbiosis and later neuropsychological developmental deficits. Behavioral effects, while related to neurodevelopment, are often more subtle and difficult to measure. The extent of later neurobehavioral consequences associated with such microbial dysbiosis has yet to be determined. We explored associations between the infants' gut microbiome and early childhood behavior at 4 years of age and identified the bacterial taxa through a multivariate analysis by linear models. Methods: Parents completed the Childhood Behavioral Checklist (CBCL) focused on different DSM diagnostic categories: affective, anxiety, pervasive developmental, attention deficit/hyperactivity, and oppositional defiant. All the CBCL scores were corrected for gender, delivery method, gestational age, infant birth weight, occurrence of sepsis, and days on antibiotics prior statistical analyses. Canonical correlation analysis (CCA) was performed to determine the relationship between early life gut microbiome and the adjusted CBCL scores. The association of bacterial Amplicon sequence Variants (ASVs) to the CBCL scores were tested with multivariate analysis by linear models (MaAsLin). Results: Nineteen children who were previously born with very low birth weight and studied while hospitalized in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) were included in this study. Statistically significant associations were observed between early life gut bacteria such as Veillonella dispar, Enterococcus, Escherichia coli, and Rumincococcus to later behavior at 4 years. No significant association could be observed with early-life gut microbiome alpha diversity and behavioral measures at 4 years. Discussion: These preliminary observational data provide insight

Keywords: gut microbiome, gut-brain axis, childhood, Behavior, Gastrointestinal microbiome, microbiota

Received: 14 Sep 2023; Accepted: 20 Nov 2023.

Copyright: © 2023 Ozorio Dutra, Sarkar, Yoo, Shaffer-Hudkins and Groer. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Dr. Samia Valeria Ozorio Dutra, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, United States