A study has found that newborn babies generally have one of three pioneer bacteria in their gut shortly after birth.
Researchers now believe that one of these strains — Bifidobacterium breve — could offer great promise as a personalised infant probiotic to promote the development of a healthy gut microbiome.
B. breve for better nutrient absorption and pathogen protection
The study, which was the largest to assess the gut microbiomes of UK babies to date, involved the analysis of stool samples from 1,288 healthy infants under a month old.
The results, which are available to view in Nature Microbiology, found that B. breve can assist an infant in absorbing the nutrients found in breast milk.
The ‘good’ bacterium was also able to block the colonisation of pathogens in an infant’s gut, calling attention to its natural probiotic capacity.
These study findings support the idea that incorporating Bifidobacterium breve into therapeutic probiotics and nutraceutical formulations targeted at infants could be highly beneficial.
According to the academic institutes involved in the study, a majority of commercial infant probiotics don’t contain a pioneering bacterial strain, so this could be a significant opportunity for probiotic developers.
B. longum also shows promise
Results of the stool sample analysis also revealed that Bifidobacterium longum was beneficial to a newborn’s gut, as it promotes the stable colonisation beneficial microbes.
Notably, the common probiotic strain used in infant formulas, Bifidobacterium infantis, was not found to be a pioneer bacterium, and is actually rare in UK infants.
Therefore, incorporating B. breve into infant-personalised nutraceuticals could be the way forward.
The first author of this paper from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Dr Yan Shao, stated: “By analysing the high-resolution genomic information from over 1,200 babies, we have identified three pioneer bacteria that drive the development of the gut microbiota, allowing us to group them into infant microbiome profiles.”
“Being able to see the make-up of these ecosystems and how they differ is the first step in developing effective personalised interventions to help support a healthy microbiome.”
The study’s co-author from UCL, Prof. Nigel Field, added: “While our study has shortlisted three pioneer bacteria as important for babies’ microbiome development, it remains to be determined if and how different pioneer bacteria affect health and diseases, both in childhood and later in life.”
“The UK Baby Biome Study is actively following up participants to give clues about this, and now even bigger cohorts are needed to investigate the role of the infant microbiome on health.”