Findings from a new Dartmouth-led study, published in the journal mBio, highlight key differences in the gut microbiome (communities of bacteria) of infants with cystic fibrosis (CF) compared to that of healthy infants, and how these alterations may adversely affect their health. CF is a multi-organ genetic disease that causes sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive system, as well as heightened inflammation in the gut and at other body sites.
It’s been known that in healthy infants, the intestinal microbiome is very dynamic and changes over time as a consequence of how they’re delivered at birth, whether they’re breastfed or not, and when they transition to solid food, among other factors. Then at three to five years of age, these changes stabilize into an adult-like microbiome. This process is key to healthy development.”
Benjamin Ross, PhD, lead author, assistant professor of microbiology and immunology, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine
“We didn’t really know how that process played out in infants with CF, so we set out to study how the gut microbiome of infants with the disease matured and if that maturation process was different compared to healthy kids,” says Ross, whose collaborators at Geisel and Dartmouth Health included George O’Toole, PhD, Juliette Madan, MD, MS, and Julie Sanville, DO.
For their study, the investigators recruited a cohort of 40 infants with CF from the Northern New England area who were cared for and followed at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center between 2009 and 2019. The team