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Our latest paper with Thilini Jayasinghe, Wayne Cutfield, @DrJOSull and many others investigated gut microbiomes and fecal/serum metabolomes of 7-11 year old children who were born very preterm (+controls). 1/5 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcimb.2020.00276/full
Children born very preterm (≤32 weeks gestation) had higher fecal calprotectin level indicative of (low-grade) gut inflammation. 2/5
While there were no differences in bacterial gut microbiomes, children born preterm had lower gut phage richness. However, the majority of assembled phage genomes lacked confident taxonomic annotations. 3/5
Children born preterm also had lower plasma but not fecal arginine levels. Other affected plasma metabolites included branch chain amino acids (valine, leucine, isoleucine) and hydroxyproline, all lower in children born preterm. 4/5
These differences may have been established in early life. Will be exciting to learn more about gut phages in infancy and in other settings such as fecal microbiota transplantation. 5/5.
