Species of gut bacteria linked to enhanced cognition and language skills in infant boys
Alberta study offers compelling new evidence pointing to the importance of gut bacteria for neurodevelopment
2021-07-13
(Press-News.org) The University of Alberta-led research followed more than 400 infants from the CHILD Cohort Study (CHILD) at its Edmonton site. Boys with a gut bacterial composition that was high in the bacteria Bacteroidetes at one year of age were found to have more advanced cognition and language skills one year later. The finding was specific to male children.
"It's well known that female children score higher (at early ages), especially in cognition and language," said Anita Kozyrskyj, a professor of pediatrics at the U of A and principal investigator of the SyMBIOTA (Synergy in Microbiota) laboratory. "But when it comes to gut microbial composition, it was the male infants where we saw this obvious connection between the Bacteroidetes and the improved scores."
"The differences between male and female gut microbiota are very subtle, but we do know from CHILD Cohort Study data that girls at early ages are more likely to have more of these Bacteroidetes. So perhaps most girls have a sufficient number of Bacteroidetes and that's why they have improved scores over boys," added Kozyrskyj.
The researchers, led by Kozyrskyj and associate professor of pediatrics Piush Mandhane, studied bacteria found in fecal samples from the infants and identified three different groups exhibiting similar dominant clusters of bacteria. They then evaluated the infants on a variety of neural developmental scales. Of those groups, only the male infants with Bacteroidetes-dominant bacteria showed signs of enhanced neurodevelopment.
The research replicates similar findings from a U.S. study that also showed an association between Bacteroidetes and neural development.
According to Kozyrskyj, Bacteroidetes are one of a very few bacteria that produce metabolites called sphingolipids, which are instrumental for the formation and structure of neurons in the brain.
"It makes sense that if you have more of these microbes and they produce more sphingolipids, then you should see some improvement in terms of the formation of neuron connections in our brain and improved scores in cognition and language," she said.
According to Kozyrskyj, caesarean birth is one factor that can significantly deplete Bacteroidetes. Factors that positively influence gut microbiota composition in infants include breastfeeding, having a high-fibre diet, living with a dog and being exposed to nature and green spaces.
While the findings don't necessarily mean children with a lower proportion of Bacteroidetes will remain behind their peers in later childhood or adulthood, the researchers believe the study offers early promise as a way to potentially identify children at risk of neurodevelopmental disorders.
The team will continue to follow the infants participating in CHILD to determine whether the findings can be predictive of autism or attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Moving forward, the researchers are also examining several other factors that may have an impact on neurodevelopment in infants, including stress and gut colonization by the bacterium Clostridium difficile.
"Over the first one to two years of life, your brain is very malleable," said Kozyrskyj. "Now we're seeing a connection between its malleability and gut microbiota, and I think that is very important."
INFORMATION:
The study, "Bacteroides-dominant gut microbiome of late infancy is associated with enhanced neurodevelopment," was published in the journal Gut Microbes.
Funding for the study was provided by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Stollery Children's Hospital Foundation and Alberta Women's Health Foundation through the Women and Children's Health Research Institute, and the Allergy, Genes, and Environment (AllerGen) Network of Centres of Excellence.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-07-13
Children exposed to elevated levels of air pollution may be more likely to have poor inhibitory control during late childhood and poor academic skills in early adolescence, including spelling, reading comprehension, and math skills. Difficulty with inhibition in late childhood was found to be a precursor to later air pollution-related academic problems. Interventions that target inhibitory control might improve outcomes.
Results of the study by researchers at the Columbia Center for Children's Environmental Health (CCCEH) at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Columbia University Irving Medical Center are published in the journal Environmental ...
2021-07-13
Compared with heterosexual smokers, menthol cigarette smoking is higher among lesbian, gay and bisexual cigarette smokers, according to a Rutgers-led study, especially among bisexual and lesbian/gay female cigarette smokers.
The study, published in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, examined national data from 2015 to 2019 of individuals ages 18 years and older by sex and sexual identity and found that among smokers, 54 and 50 percent of bisexual and lesbian/gay females smokers preferred menthol cigarettes, respectively, compared with 39 percent of smokers overall.
This study comes in the wake of plans by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban menthol cigarettes; a move that researchers say is ...
2021-07-13
Information-rich optical imaging can provide multidimensional information to enable observation and analysis of a detected target, contributing insights into mysterious and unknown worlds. With its ability to capture dynamic scenes on picosecond—and even femtosecond—timescales, ultrafast multidimensional optical imaging has important applications in the detection of the ultrafast phenomena in physics, chemistry, and biology.
While pump-probe-based ultrafast imaging can acquire high-resolution multidimensional information, it cannot adequately capture unstable or irreversible transient scenes. Fortunately, compressed ultrafast photography (CUP), based ...
2021-07-13
A decade after scientists discovered that lab rats will rescue a fellow rat in distress, but not a rat they consider an outsider, new research from the University of California, Berkeley, pinpoints the brain regions that drive rats to prioritize their nearest and dearest in times of crisis. It also suggests humans may share the same neural bias.
The findings, published today, Tuesday, July 13, in the journal eLife, suggest that altruism, whether in rodents or humans, is motivated by social bonding and familiarity rather than sympathy or guilt.
"We have found that the group identity ...
2021-07-13
JUPITER, FL - The brain is wired for learning. With each experience, our neurons branch out to make new connections, laying down the circuitry of our long-term memories. Scientists call this trait plasticity, referring to an ability to adapt and change with experience.
For plasticity to happen, our neurons' synapses, or connection points, must constantly remodel and adapt, too. The mechanics underlying neurons' synaptic plasticity have become clearer, thanks to new research from the lab of Scripps Research neuroscientist Sathya Puthanveettil, PhD.
Scientists have learned that synaptic plasticity requires a complex relay from the neuron's cell body to its dendrite arms and its synapse junctions. Like a 24-hour port and highway network, an internal ...
2021-07-13
ITHACA, N.Y. - Direct farm marketing efforts, such as farmers markets and roadside stands, are more successful in communities with more nonprofits, social enterprises and creative industries, according to a team including Cornell University researchers, who created a nationwide database of assets to help municipalities craft community-specific development plans.
While many municipalities seek to encourage direct-to-consumer (DTC) marketing - an important factor in farmers' livelihoods - the success of their efforts hinges on a wide array of community resources, or capital assets, with natural and cultural ...
2021-07-13
AMHERST, Mass. - Humans have known for over two thousand years that shipworms, a worm-like mollusk, are responsible for damage to wooden boats, docks, dikes and piers. Yet new research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst published in Frontiers in Microbiology reveals that we still don't know the most basic thing about them: how they eat.
"It's unbelievable," says Reuben Shipway, adjunct assistant professor in microbiology at UMass Amherst, research fellow at the Centre for Enzyme Innovation at the University of Portsmouth, UK, and one of the paper's authors. "The ancient Greeks wrote about them, Christopher Columbus lost his fleet due to what he called 'the havoc which the worm had wrought,' and, today, shipworms cause billions of dollars of damage a year."
Shipworms ...
2021-07-13
Middle- to older-aged adults who ate at least three servings of whole grains daily had smaller increases in waist size, blood pressure, and blood sugar levels over time compared to those who ate less than one-half serving per day, according to new research.
Published July 13, 2021, in the Journal of Nutrition, the study by researchers at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University examined how whole- and refined-grain intake over time impacted five risk factors of heart disease: Waist size, blood pressure, blood sugar, triglyceride, and HDL ("good") cholesterol.
Using data from the Framingham Heart Study Offspring ...
2021-07-13
Philadelphia, July 13, 2021 - Consumers may have less trust in food processes that they don't understand, and animal-based foods may be subject to more uninformed scrutiny than other foods due to consumers' perception of higher risk. Dairy producers can benefit from understanding how consumers interpret unfamiliar terms and claims on dairy product labels. In a new END ...
2021-07-13
New research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has shown that the mutations arising in the COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus seem to run in the family -- or at least the genus of coronaviruses most dangerous to humans.
After comparing the early evolution of SARS-CoV-2 against that of its closest relatives, the betacoronaviruses, the Nebraska team found that SARS-CoV-2 mutations are occurring in essentially the same locations, both genetically and structurally.
The mutational similarities between SARS-CoV-2 and its predecessors, including the human-infecting SARS-CoV-1 and MERS-CoV, could help inform predictions of how the COVID-causing virus will continue to evolve, the researchers ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Species of gut bacteria linked to enhanced cognition and language skills in infant boys
Alberta study offers compelling new evidence pointing to the importance of gut bacteria for neurodevelopment
