Author(s) :

Shion Choe.

Volume/Issue :

Abstract :

The early life microbiome of an individual is a critical factor for long term health conditions, yet the influence of various feeding modes on microbial transmission patterns remains as a complex area for study. This study presents a secondary analysis of publicly available infant microbiome data, while proposing a novel quantitative ‘microbial seeding score’ to evaluate the direction and magnitude of earlylife microbiome colonization across feeding modes. Using genus-level microbiome data from a total of 67 infants obtained from HE_INFANTS_MFGM_2019 dataset, a microbial seeding score (S) was calculated to examine maternally associated taxa (Bacteroides, Bifidobacterium) with environmentally associated taxa (Enterococcus, Staphylococcus, Streptococcus, Klebsiella). Infants were grouped into breast milk (n=16), experimental infant formula (n=25), and standard infant formula (n=26) by feeding mode. Breast milk-fed infants indicated the highest mean seeding score (S = 0.391 ± 0.319), and experimental formulafed infants showed the intermediate mean seeding score (S = 0.352 ± 0.352). Standard formula-fed infants exhibited the lowest mean seeding score (S= 0.301 ± 0.309). Differences were not statistically significant (one-way ANOVA, p=0.676). However, there was a consistent decreasing trend in seeding scores observed across feeding modes. The main contribution of this work is methodological for introducing a simplified quantitative metric instead of reporting new empirical microbiome measurements. These findings suggest that the proposed seeding score in this study may capture exploratory patterns of variation in early microbial colonization, although differences were not statistically significant.