Human milk microbiota development during lactation and its relation to maternal geographic location and gestational hypertensive status

Gut Microbes

Jihong Yuan¹  Fenglei Wang²  Duo Li³  Jiaomei Li³  Yi Wan⁴  Jiajing Jiang⁴  Wenfeng Tong⁴  Renke Zhou⁴  Mengqing Lu⁴ 

[1] Chinese People’s Liberation Army General Hospital;Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health;Qingdao University;Zhejiang University;

关键词: human milk;    milk microbiota;    maternal factors;    gestational blood pressure;    lactation;   

DOI  :  10.1080/19490976.2020.1760711

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Bacteria in human milk could directly seed the infant intestinal microbiota, while information about how milk microbiota develops during lactation and how geographic location, gestational hypertensive status, and maternal age influence this process is limited. Here, we collected human milk samples from mothers of term infants at the first day, 2 weeks, and 6 weeks postpartum from 117 longitudinally followed-up mothers (age: 28.7 ± 3.6 y) recruited from three cities in China. We found that milk microbial diversity and richness were the highest in colostrum but gradually decreased over lactation. Microbial composition changed across lactation and exhibited more discrete compositional patterns in 2-week and 6-week milk samples compared with colostrum samples. At phylum level, the abundance of Proteobacteria increased during lactation, while Firmicutes showed the opposite trend. At genus level, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Acinetobacter, Pseudomonas, and Lactobacillus were predominant in colostrum samples and showed distinct variations across lactation. Maternal geographic location was significantly associated with the milk microbiota development and the abundance of predominant genus. In addition, milk from mothers with gestational prehypertension had a different and less diverse microbial community at genus level in early lactation times, and contained less Lactobacillus in the 2-week milk samples than those from normotensive mothers. Findings of our study outlined the human milk microbial diversity and community development over lactation, and underscored the importance of maternal geographic locations and gestational hypertensive status on milk microbiota, which might have important implications in the establishment of the infant intestinal microbiota via breastfeeding.

【 授权许可】

Unknown