Associations between bacterial communities of house dust and infant gut

T. Konya, B. Koster, H. Maughan, M. Escobar, M. B. Azad, D. S. Guttman, M. R. Sears, A. B. Becker, J. R. Brook, T. K. Takaro, A. L. Kozyrskyj, J. A. Scott*, R. Allen, D. Befus, M. Brauer, M. Cyr, E. Chen, D. Daley, S. Dell, J. DenburgS. Elliott, H. Grasemann, K. HayGlass, R. Hegele, L. Holness, M. Kobor, T. Kollmann, C. Laprise, M. Larché, W. Lou, J. Macri, P. Mandhane, G. Miller, R. Moqbel, T. Moraes, P. Paré, C. Ramsey, F. Ratjen, B. Ritchie, A. Sandford, Jeremy Scott, F. Silverman, P. Subbarao, S. Tebbutt, P. Tang, T. To, S. Turvey

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

52 Scopus citations

Abstract

The human gut is host to a diverse and abundant community of bacteria that influence health and disease susceptibility. This community develops in infancy, and its composition is strongly influenced by environmental factors, notably perinatal anthropogenic exposures such as delivery mode (Cesarean vs. vaginal) and feeding method (breast vs. formula); however, the built environment as a possible source of exposure has not been considered. Here we report on a preliminary investigation of the associations between bacteria in house dust and the nascent fecal microbiota from 20 subjects from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study using high-throughput sequence analysis of portions of the 16S rRNA gene. Despite significant differences between the dust and fecal microbiota revealed by Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) analysis, permutation analysis confirmed that 14 bacterial OTUs representing the classes Actinobacteria (3), Bacilli (3), Clostridia (6) and Gammaproteobacteria (2) co-occurred at a significantly higher frequency in matched dust-stool pairs than in randomly permuted pairs, indicating an association between these dust and stool communities. These associations could indicate a role for the indoor environment in shaping the nascent gut microbiota, but future studies will be needed to confirm that our findings do not solely reflect a reverse pathway. Although pet ownership was strongly associated with the presence of certain genera in the dust for dogs (Agrococcus, Carnobacterium, Exiguobacterium, Herbaspirillum, Leifsonia and Neisseria) and cats (Escherichia), no clear patterns were observed in the NMDS-resolved stool community profiles as a function of pet ownership.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)25-30
Number of pages6
JournalEnvironmental Research
Volume131
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2014

Funding

We thank the study families and research teams of the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study, AllerGen NCE for supporting pilot dust analyses, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for funding the SyMBIOTA team. The CHILD Study is supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research , the AllerGen Network of Centres of Excellence , the Childhood Asthma Foundation , Health Canada , Environment Canada , and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation . Professor L. Sly (University of Queensland) kindly provided comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this manuscript.

Keywords

  • Built environment
  • Child health
  • Gut microbiota

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Biochemistry
  • General Environmental Science

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