Breastfeeding may have a long-term effect on oral microbiota: results from the Fin-HIT cohort

Ilana Eshriqui,Sajan C Raju,Heli T Viljakainen,Rejane A O Figueiredo,Sandra R G Ferreira,Elisabete Weiderpass

doi:10.1186/s13006-020-00285-w

Abstract

BackgroundBreastfeeding contributes to gastrointestinal microbiota colonization in early life, but its long-term impact is inconclusive. We aimed to evaluate whether the type of feeding during the first six months of life was associated with oral microbiota in adolescence.MethodsThis is a cross-sectional sub-study using baseline information of 423 adolescents from the Finnish Health in Teens (Fin-HIT) cohort. Type of feeding was recalled by parents and dichotomized as (i) No infant formula; (ii) Infant formula (breastmilk + formula or only formula). Saliva microbiota was analysed using 16S rRNA (V3–V4) sequencing. Alpha diversity and beta diversity were compared between feeding type groups using ANCOVA and PERMANOVA, respectively. Differential bacteria abundance was tested using appropriate general linear models.ResultsMean age and body mass index were 11.7 years and 18.0 kg/m2, respectively. The No formula group contained 41% of the participants. Firmicutes (51.0%), Bacteroidetes (19.1%), and Proteobacteria (16.3%) were the most abundant phyla among all participants. Alpha and beta diversity indices did not differ between the two feeding groups. Three Operational Taxonomic Units (OTUs) belonging to Eubacteria and Veillonella genera (phylum Firmicutes) were more abundant in the No formula than in the Infant formula group (log2fold changes/ p - values − 0.920/ < 0.001, − 0.328/ 0.001, − 0.577/ 0.004).ConclusionDifferences exist in abundances of some OTUs in adolescence according to feeding type during the first six months of life, but our findings do not support diversity and overall oral microbiota composition in adolescents being affected by early feeding type.

Highlights

Breastfeeding contributes to gastrointestinal microbiota colonization in early life, but its long-term impact is inconclusive
We aimed to evaluate whether the type of feeding during the first six months of life is associated with oral microbiota diversity and composition in Finnish adolescents
Mean values of alpha diversity indices were 2.9 (0.3) and 10.1 (3.1) for Shannon and Inverse Simpson, respectively, and these did not differ between the No formula and Infant formula groups (Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Breastfeeding contributes to gastrointestinal microbiota colonization in early life, but its long-term impact is inconclusive. DOHaD theory proposes that exposures during critical development periods, such as the first 1000 days of life, could unleash metabolic programming that is able to modify structure and function of organs and systems, impacting health status later in life [1,2,3]. Perturbations of microbiota during early life have been associated with later inflammatory or immune-mediated diseases, such as allergy, asthma, and obesity [7,8,9,10], indicating that microbiota has a critical period of development. Evidence of possible protection of breastfeeding against obesity and related outcomes in adulthood supports the DOHaD theory [11, 12]. An explanation for the protective effect is its role during the gut microbiota establishment period [7, 13]. Relative to formula-fed infants, breastfed infants seem to have a lower abundance of Clostridium and a predominance of Bifidobacteria and Lactobacilli in the gut [6, 8, 14,15,16,17,18]

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