Lower perinatal exposure to Proteobacteria is an independent predictor of early childhood wheezing

Abstract

Circulating free Proteobacterial DNA in umbilical cord serum is associated with features of childhood asthma including maternal atopy, early childhood wheezing, and bronchodilator response.

Figure 1.. Maternal atopy is associated with composition of cfbDNA and lower Proteobacteria cfbDNA.

A) UNIFRAC pairwise distances are shown for distances between children with atopic mothers and those without (Between), and the with-in group distances for children of atopic mothers (Atopic, n = 9) and those of non-atopic mothers (Non-Atopic, n = 17). P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant, Kruskal-Wallis pre-hoc test or Dunn’s post-hoc Test. B) Abundance of Proteobacteria displayed as normalized counts for samples from non-atopic and atopic mothers. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant, Mann-Whitney U-test.

Figure 2.. Lower Proteobacteria exposure is associated with increased risk of wheezing.

A) Kaplan-Meier curves for median of imputed cumulative percent parental reported wheezing at each year post-birth for children with high (solid, n = 13) and low (dashed, n = 10) exposure to Proteobacteria cfbDNA. B) Children who had pulmonary function tests at mid-childhood follow up (median age 8.0 years) were dichotomized for abundance of Proteobacteria, high (grey, n = 4) and low (white, n = 5). The groups were assessed for associations with changes in pulmonary function tests at mid-childhood. Bronchodilator response displayed as box and whisker plots for children with high or low (greater or less than the median, respectively) Proteobacteria exposure. P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant, Mann-Whitney U-test.