Presentation Information

Nurturing the Gut: The Critical Role of Early Feeding Practices in Microbiome Development

• Speaker: Deborah L. O'Connor , PhD RD
• Presentation Type:
• Duration: 60 Mins
• Credits: 1 CERP, 1 Nursing CEU, 1 CME

Abstract:

Early development of the gut microbiota in infancy can have a profound impact on short- and long-term health; mediated in part by the gut microbiota’s role in nutrient metabolism, training the developing immune system, and protecting against pathogens. Early feeding practices (parent milk, formula; at breast/chest, bottle feeding) in healthy term-born infants influence which microbes an infant first acquires which, in turn, helps shape the trajectory of microbial development across the first postnatal years. Hospitalized infants, most notably preterm infants born of very low birthweight (VLBW 1250 grams), have perturbed gut colonization for several reasons including separation from parents, tube feeding (vs at the breast/chest), high supplement use (e.g. pasteurized donor human milk, formula), and routine antibiotic use. This presentation provides a synopsis of the plethora of recent evidence using advanced technologies used to characterize gut colonization in term-born breast/chest-fed infants and how and why this differs in hospitalized VLBW infants. Associations between early feeding practices, the microbiota found in human milk, and gut colonization will be discussed, as well asevidence that several of the benefits of mother’s own milk feeding may be mediated through gut colonization.