Objectives: Intestinal flora is considered closely related to the occurrence of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). This study aimed to discover whether diverse diet conditions during early life lead to different intestinal flora structure and impact different susceptibility to IBD.
Methods: We performed a randomized, controlled trial to investigate the relationship between maternal diet, intestinal flora, and susceptibility of IBD in offspring mice. We treated the maternal mice with different dietary conditions (maternal high fat, high protein, or normal diet, and offspring continued maternal diets or changed to normal diet), and then extracted bacterial meta-genomic DNA from the intestinal mucosa of the offspring during the early life and adult stages. We amplified and sequenced the conserved gene v3-v4 of the bacterial 16 S ribosomal RNA. After dextran sulphate sodium intervention, we evaluated the susceptibility to intestinal inflammation with hematoxylin and eosin stains and disease activity index scores.
Results: The number of species and alpha diversity of weaning mice (3 wk old) fed a maternal high-protein diet were significantly lower than those of the control diet group (P < 0.05). Among adult (8 wk old) offspring rats, the alpha diversity of mice that continued on a high-protein diet remained significantly decreased (P < 0.05). In addition, 12 kinds of weak bacteria were found in weaning mice fed a maternal high-protein diet compared with the control group. Offspring that continued in the maternal high-protein group had increased disease activity index and pathologic scores after weaning.
Conclusions: In general, our study shows that a maternal high-protein diet during early life can negatively regulate the intestinal flora diversity of offspring mice. A high-protein diet during early life led to higher susceptibility of IBD in offspring rats.
Keywords: 16 S rRNA; Alpha diversity; Early life stage; IBD; Intestinal flora.
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.