Probiotic use results in transient benefits due to changes in microbial community structure in the infant gut microbiome

Authors

  • Rafid Haq The University of British Columbia
  • Sachini Jayasinghe University of British Columbia
  • Gary Yen The University of British Columbia

Abstract

Probiotics are supplements containing various microorganisms capable of conferring health benefits to individuals that consume them. As such, they are widely used amongst children and adults, however relatively little research has been done on their effect in infants. Studies on the effects of probiotic use have been conflicting, with there currently being no general consensus on whether they are truly beneficial or not. In this study, we sought to determine whether probiotic use has an effect on the infant gut microbiome, both overall and long-term. This study was conducted using various bioinformatics platforms to analyze a dataset containing information on 325 mother-infant dyads developed by Dr. Kyung Rhee. We examined the effect of both infant (direct) and mother (indirect) use of probiotics. While investigating the long-term effects of probiotic use, we looked at a cohort of subjects that had taken probiotics at the same time point to determine a potential before and after effect. We found that probiotic use can result in a reduction in the prevalence of amplicon sequence variants affiliated with harmful gut bacteria. However, we had also found through a time point analysis that this effect is not sustained after probiotic supplementation has ceased. These findings may provide some insight into whether probiotics should be provided to infants and possibly the intervals in which they should be provided.

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Published

2022-08-31