Development of the Gut Microbiota throughout the First Year of Life and Its Association with Socio-Emotional Development into Childhood.

Overview

1. Department of Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy, University Hospital Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt am Main, Germany
2. Department for Immunology, Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo), Dortmund, Germany
3. Department of Psychiatry, Radboud University Medical Center, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
4. Microbiology Department, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands
5. Centre for Population Health Research, University of Turku and Turku University Hospital, Turku, Finland
6. IQ Health Science Department, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

Abstract

Introduction: Early life is a critical window for the development of many bodily systems, including the gut microbiota and the central nervous system, that are interconnected through the gut-brain axis. These early life gut-brain axis connections are often studied through cross-sectional cohorts, limiting insights into temporal developmental trajectories. This longitudinal cohort study assessed whether gut microbial development over the first year of life is associated with socio-emotional development into childhood.

Methods: The PRIDE (pregnancy and infant development) BIOME study (n = 81, n = 42 males) is a focus cohort within the larger prospective PRIDE study. Gut microbiome was measured 5 times throughout the first year of life (at 2, 4, 6, 9, and 12 months through V4 16S rRNA sequencing) and socio-emotional development 8 times over 4.5 years, between 6 months and 5 years through the Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Social-Emotional (ASQ-SE). We related the development of the gut microbiota of infants throughout their first year of life with their socio-emotional development into childhood, the latter modeled as a slope per individual (ASQ slope). We assessed effects of time, ASQ slope and its interaction with time on microbial community measures alpha and beta diversity, as well as taxonomy, using linear mixed-effects models and PERMANOVA, correcting for sex, birth weight, gestational age, and sequencing depth.

Results: Expected developmental patterns on the gut microbiota over the first year of life were observed, including increased alpha diversity and clustering of beta diversity before and after solid food introduction. Interestingly, ASQ slope was a significant predictor of beta diversity (F(1,394) = 25.90, p = 0.001) and Bifidobacterium abundance across the first year of life (b = −0.745, SE = 0.24, pFDR = 0.023). Moreover, we observed a temporal association between ASQ slope and Eggerthella abundance (ASQ slope × timepoint interaction, b = 0.709, SE = 0.21, pFDR = 0.009). That is, Eggerthella abundance decreased across the group, but not in “late concern” infants, with concern about socio-emotional development at more recent timepoints.

Discussion: This study shows that genera Bifidobacterium and Eggerthella, known to be altered in mental health conditions such as autism spectrum disorder and depression, are already linked to socio-emotional development during early life. Hence, this work contributes to the identification of gut microbial candidates relevant for preventive screening of healthy gut-brain development and microbiota-targeted interventions.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY-NC), from the paper cited above.

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Data

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• figshare:32076303, at figshare; found in DataCite

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available due to privacy reasons but are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The R script for the analyses can be found here: https://rpubs.com/MirjamBloemendaal/.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY-NC), from the paper cited above.

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Recorded: type, language, journal, pages, dates, 11 authors, 5 keywords, 42 references.

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This paper

Bloemendaal, M., Mulder, D., Gudden, J., Heikamp-de Jong, I., Ioannou, A., Belzer, C., Natasha, E. E., Edwin Thanarajah, S., Aatsinki, A.-K., van Gelder, M. M., & Arias Vasquez, A. (2026). Development of the Gut Microbiota throughout the First Year of Life and Its Association with Socio-Emotional Development into Childhood. Developmental neuroscience, 1-14. https://doi.org/10.1159/000552189

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