Premature Infant Gut Microbiome relationships with childhood behavioral scales: preliminary insights

Samia Valeria Ozorio Dutra; Anujit Sarkar; Ji Youn Yoo; Emily Shaffer-Hudkins; Maureen Groer

doi:10.3389/fnut.2023.1294549

Premature Infant Gut Microbiome relationships with childhood behavioral scales: preliminary insights

Front Nutr. 2024 Feb 14:10:1294549. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2023.1294549. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Samia Valeria Ozorio Dutra^#^{1

2

3}, Anujit Sarkar^#^{2

3}, Ji Youn Yoo^{2

3}, Emily Shaffer-Hudkins⁴, Maureen Groer^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Nancy Atmospera-Walch School of Nursing, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI, United States.
² College of Nursing, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.
³ College of Nursing, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, Knoxville, TN, United States.
⁴ College of Medicine Pediatrics, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, United States.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Introduction: Very Low Birth Weight (VLBW) infants, born weighing less than 1,500 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 Child Behavior 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 into the relationships between VLBW gut microbiome dysbiosis and childhood behavior. This study contributes to the literature on gut microbiome analysis by examining various behavioral domains using a standardized tool linked to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Keywords: CBCL scores; behavior; childhood; gastrointestinal microbiome; gut microbiome; gut-brain axis; microbiota.

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of the article. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under grants R21 NR013094 and R01NR015446 (MG, P.I.).