Infants' First Solid Foods: Impact on Gut Microbiota Development in Two Intercontinental Cohorts

Chiara-Maria Homann^{1

2

3}, Connor A J Rossel⁴, Sara Dizzell¹, Liene Bervoets⁴, Julia Simioni⁵, Jenifer Li^{5

6}, Elizabeth Gunn^{2

3}, Michael G Surette^{1

7}, Russell J de Souza^{8

9}, Monique Mommers¹⁰, Eileen K Hutton^{5

6}, Katherine M Morrison^{2

3}, John Penders^{4

11

12}, Niels van Best^{4

11

13}, Jennifer C Stearns^{1

7}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8N 3Z5, Canada.
² Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
³ Centre for Metabolism, Obesity and Diabetes Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁴ Department of Medical Microbiology, School of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism (NUTRIM), Maastricht University, 6229 ER Maastricht, The Netherlands.
⁵ Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁶ McMaster Midwifery Research Centre, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁷ Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁸ Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁹ Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation, Hamilton, ON L8L 2X2, Canada.
¹⁰ Department of Epidemiology, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Maastricht University, 6229 ER Maastricht, The Netherlands.
¹¹ InVivo Planetary Health: An Affiliate of the World Universities Network (WUN), West New York, NJ 10704, USA.
¹² Department of Medical Microbiology, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Maastricht University Medical Centre, 6229 ER Maastricht, The Netherlands.
¹³ Institute of Medical Microbiology, RWTH University Hospital Aachen, RWTH University, 52074 Aachen, Germany.

PMID: 34444798
PMCID: PMC8400337
DOI: 10.3390/nu13082639

Infants' First Solid Foods: Impact on Gut Microbiota Development in Two Intercontinental Cohorts

Chiara-Maria Homann et al. Nutrients. 2021.

. 2021 Jul 30;13(8):2639.

doi: 10.3390/nu13082639.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8N 3Z5, Canada.
² Department of Pediatrics, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
³ Centre for Metabolism, Obesity and Diabetes Research, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁴ Department of Medical Microbiology, School of Nutrition and Translational Research in Metabolism (NUTRIM), Maastricht University, 6229 ER Maastricht, The Netherlands.
⁵ Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁶ McMaster Midwifery Research Centre, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁷ Farncombe Family Digestive Health Research Institute, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁸ Department of Health Research Methods, Evidence and Impact, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S 4K1, Canada.
⁹ Population Health Research Institute, Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation, Hamilton, ON L8L 2X2, Canada.
¹⁰ Department of Epidemiology, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Maastricht University, 6229 ER Maastricht, The Netherlands.
¹¹ InVivo Planetary Health: An Affiliate of the World Universities Network (WUN), West New York, NJ 10704, USA.
¹² Department of Medical Microbiology, Care and Public Health Research Institute (CAPHRI), Maastricht University Medical Centre, 6229 ER Maastricht, The Netherlands.
¹³ Institute of Medical Microbiology, RWTH University Hospital Aachen, RWTH University, 52074 Aachen, Germany.

PMID: 34444798
PMCID: PMC8400337
DOI: 10.3390/nu13082639

Abstract

The introduction of solid foods is an important dietary event during infancy that causes profound shifts in the gut microbial composition towards a more adult-like state. Infant gut bacterial dynamics, especially in relation to nutritional intake remain understudied. Over 2 weeks surrounding the time of solid food introduction, the day-to-day dynamics in the gut microbiomes of 24 healthy, full-term infants from the Baby, Food & Mi and LucKi-Gut cohort studies were investigated in relation to their dietary intake. Microbial richness (observed species) and diversity (Shannon index) increased over time and were positively associated with dietary diversity. Microbial community structure (Bray-Curtis dissimilarity) was determined predominantly by individual and age (days). The extent of change in community structure in the introductory period was negatively associated with daily dietary diversity. High daily dietary diversity stabilized the gut microbiome. Bifidobacterial taxa were positively associated, while taxa of the genus Veillonella, that may be the same species, were negatively associated with dietary diversity in both cohorts. This study furthers our understanding of the impact of solid food introduction on gut microbiome development in early life. Dietary diversity seems to have the greatest impact on the gut microbiome as solids are introduced.

Keywords: 16S rRNA; complementary foods; dietary diversity; gut community; infant gut microbiome; infant nutrition; introduction to solids; microbial diversity.

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Conflict of interest statement

R.J.d.S. has served as an external resource person to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Nutrition Guidelines Advisory Group on trans fats, saturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats. The WHO paid for his travel and accommodation to attend meetings from 2012–2017 to present and discuss this work. He has also done contract research for the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s (CIHR) Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes, Health Canada, and the WHO for which he received remuneration. He has received speaker’s fees from the University of Toronto, and McMaster Children’s Hospital. He has held grants from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Canadian Foundation for Dietetic Research, Population Health Research Institute, and Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation as a principal investigator, and is a co-investigator on several funded team grants from the CIHR. He serves as a member of the Nutrition Science Advisory Committee to Health Canada (Government of Canada), a co-opted member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) Subgroup on the Framework for the Evaluation of Evidence (Public Health England), and as an independent director of the Helderleigh Foundation (Canada). J.C.S. holds the Farncombe Chair in Microbial Ecology and Bioinformatics and a CIHR Operating Grant: Early Career Investigator Grants in Maternal, Reproductive, Child & Youth Health (#161359). K.M.M. is on the advisory board for Novo Nordisk. All other authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

**Figure 1**
Individual food items consumed by the infants over the study period. (A) Baby, Food & Mi sub-study; (B) LucKi-Gut study. Only food items that were eaten by two or more infants are shown. Cumulative frequency describes overall intake of servings over the study period. The food groups shown here are dairy (D), fruit (F), grains (G), meat (M), oils (O) and vegetables (V).

**Figure 2**
Bacterial communities differ by cohort; however, greater variability is seen between individuals. (A) Explained variance (R²) and statistical significance of cohort (Baby, Food & Mi/LucKi-Gut sub-studies), individual and period (before/after solid food introduction) on the microbial community structure (Bray–Curtis dissimilarity) as determined by multivariable PERMANOVA on merged V3 data. (B) PCoA of microbial communities. (C,D) Dendrograms of UPGMA clustering of individuals by Bray–Curtis dissimilarity and relative genus abundance bar charts for each sample before the introduction of solids (C) and after the introduction of solids (D). Color of symbols indicate sub-study and shape of symbols indicate individual. Bacterial genera in “Other” include genera with a relative abundance < 5%. (E) Venn diagrams of the number of ASVs shared between the sub-studies. (F) Boxplots depicting the observed richness and Shannon diversity before and after the introduction of solid foods. For all panels green = Baby, Food & Mi, orange = LucKi-Gut.

**Figure 3**
Alpha diversity increased over the sub-study period and over the first year of life. Bray–Curtis dissimilarity over time shows that the gut microbial community was dynamic over the first year of life. All plots are colored by participant ID (PID). (A–F) Baby, Food & Mi sub-study; (G–L) LucKi-Gut sub-study. (A,G) Observed richness over the sub-study period, mean values are shown with a thick blue line. (B,H) Shannon diversity over the sub-study period, mean values are shown with a thick blue line. (C,I) Observed richness over the first year of life. (D,J) Shannon diversity over the first year of life. (E,K) PCoA plot of the sub-study samples. (F,L) Change in Bray–Curtis dissimilarity between each study visit and the one previous to it. (* p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001).

**Figure 4**
Bacterial taxa in both communities were associated with dietary variables. (A) Heatmaps of the associations found in negative binomial regressions when adjusted for total caloric intake (kcal/d) and age at introduction (weeks) in the Baby, Food & Mi study. (B) Heatmaps of the associations found in negative binomial regressions when adjusted for total caloric intake (kcal/d) and age at introduction (weeks) in the LucKi-Gut study. Negative associations are shown in red, while positive associations are shown in blue. (p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001).

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Infants' First Solid Foods: Impact on Gut Microbiota Development in Two Intercontinental Cohorts

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Infants' First Solid Foods: Impact on Gut Microbiota Development in Two Intercontinental Cohorts

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Conflict of interest statement

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