ArticleAmerican journal of biological anthropology2024
Contact with caregivers is associated with composition of the infant gastrointestinal microbiome in the first 6 months of life.
Article in American journal of biological anthropology, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Fermented Foods, Functional Nutrition, and Maternal Gut Microbiota During Pregnancy: Molecular Mechanisms and the Maternal-Infant Microbiome Axis.International journal of molecular sciences · 2026Review
- Bidirectional relations between the maternal and infant gut microbiome and behavior.Pediatric research · 2026Article
- The perinatal microbiota in dogs and cats: a narrative review from human research to veterinary practice.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Review
- Environmental and maternal imprints on infant gut metabolic development.Cell host & microbe · 2025Article
- Environmental and Maternal Imprints on Infant Gut Metabolic Programming.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Regulatory T-Cells During Pregnancy Relate to Women's Own Childhood History of Microbial Exposure.American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · 2025Article
- Associations among rearing environment and the infant gut microbiome with early-life neurodevelopment and cognitive development in a nonhuman primate model (Journal of developmental origins of health and disease · 2025Article
- Birth and household exposures are associated with changes to skin bacterial communities during infancy.Evolution, medicine, and public health · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectivesLittle is known about how physical contact at birth and early caregiving environments influence the colonization of the infant gastrointestinal microbiome. We investigated how infant contact with caregivers at birth and within the first 2 weeks of life relates to the composition of the gastrointestinal microbiome in a sample of U.S. infants (n = 60).
methodsSkin-to-skin and physical contact with caregivers at birth and early caregiving environments were surveyed at 2 weeks postpartum. Stool samples were collected from infants at 2 weeks, 2, 6, and 12 months of age and underwent 16S rRNA sequencing as a proxy for the gastrointestinal microbiome. Associations between early caregiving environments and alpha and beta diversity, and differential abundance of bacteria at the genus level were assessed using PERMANOVA, and negative binomial mixed models in DEseq2.
resultsTime in physical contact with caregivers explained 10% of variation in beta diversity at 2 weeks' age. The number of caregivers in the first few weeks of life explained 9% of variation in beta diversity at 2 weeks and the number of individuals in physical contact at birth explained 11% of variation in beta diversity at 6 months. Skin-to-skin contact on the day of birth was positively associated with the abundance of eight genera. Infants held for by more individuals had greater abundance of eight genera. DISCUSSION: Results reveal a potential mechanism (skin-to-skin and physical contact) by which caregivers influence the infant gastrointestinal microbiome. Our findings contribute to work exploring the social transmission of microbes.
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