Correlations between human milk bacteria and oligosaccharide concentrations

Abstract

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMO) are a major component of human milk that potentially affect the bacterial composition in the intestine of breastfed infants. We now hypothesize that HMO also affect the highly complex community of non-pathogenic bacteria recently identified in the milk of healthy mothers. To test this hypothesis, milk samples were collected aseptically from 16 healthy lactating women and their microbiota characterized using pyrosequencing of the 16S ribosomal RNA gene. HMO were fluorescently tagged and analyzed by HPLC-FL. Correlation analysis identified numerous relationships between HMOs and relative abundance of the 15 most prevalent bacterial genera. Notably, the abundance of Staphylococcus was highly correlated to total HMO (r=0.71, P<0.002) and, more specifically, to 2′fucosyllactose (r=0.77, P< 0.05). These correlations suggest the potential for an interaction between HMO and specific types of human milk bacteria. Grant Funding Source: University of Idaho Initiative for Bioinformatics and Evolutionary Studies (IBEST), United Dairymen of Idaho, and NIH P20 RR15587, P20 RR016454 and K99/R00DK068668