Diversity, compositional and functional differences between gut microbiota of children and adults

Abstract

The gut microbiota has been shown to play diverse roles in human health and disease although the underlying mechanisms have not yet been fully elucidated. Large cohort studies can provide further understanding into inter-individual differences, with more precise characterization of the pathways by which the gut microbiota influences human physiology and disease processes. Here, we aimed to profile the stool microbiome of children and adults from two population-based cohort studies, comprising 2,111 children in the age-range of 9 to 12 years (the Generation R Study) and 1,427 adult individuals in the range of 46 to 88 years of age (the Rotterdam Study). For the two cohorts, 16S rRNA gene profile datasets derived from the Dutch population were generated. The comparison of the two cohorts showed that children had significantly lower gut microbiome diversity. Furthermore, we observed higher relative abundances of genus Bacteroides in children and higher relative abundances of genus Blautia in adults. Predicted functional metagenome analysis showed an overrepresentation of the glycan degradation pathways, riboflavin (vitamin B2), pyridoxine (vitamin B6) and folate (vitamin B9) biosynthesis pathways in children. In contrast, the gut microbiome of adults showed higher abundances of carbohydrate metabolism pathways, beta-lactam resistance, thiamine (vitamin B1) and pantothenic (vitamin B5) biosynthesis pathways. A predominance of catabolic pathways in children (valine, leucine and isoleucine degradation) as compared to biosynthetic pathways in adults (valine, leucine and isoleucine biosynthesis) suggests a functional microbiome switch to the latter in adult individuals. Overall, we identified compositional and functional differences in gut microbiome between children and adults in a population-based setting. These microbiome profiles can serve as reference for future studies on specific human disease susceptibility in childhood, adulthood and specific diseased populations.

Long-term effects of antimicrobial drugs on the composition of the human gut microbiota

“…Also, the microbiota within our cohort had similar profiles as those in two other large population-based cohorts. 25 Another limitation may be that our results were obtained from feces samples and may not reflect the microbiota more proximal in the digestive tract. 26 Furthermore, we only used the last prescription before sampling, not taking into account the antimicrobial drug prescriptions used previously.…”

The Core of Gut Life: Firmicutes Profile in Patients with Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis

“…2% abundance. Recently, a higher relative abundance of Blautia was reported in healthy Dutch adults as compared with children [ 53 ], and in children with cystic fibrosis Blautia was reported to be positively associated with age, the latter being the strongest predictor of overall fecal bacterial diversity [ 54 ]. However, we could not find reported association specifically between Blautia / Blautia wexlerae with the age of the MS-afflicted patients.…”

Microbiomics, Metabolomics, Predicted Metagenomics, and Hepatic Steatosis in a Population‐Based Study of 1,355 Adults

“…For a detailed description of the gut microbiome data‐set generation, we refer to the recent paper of Radjabzadeh et al ( 26 ) In short, 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene amplification of variable regions 3 and 4 was used to sequence all samples by the Illumina MiSeq platform v3 (San Diego, CXA). The sequence data were rarefied at 10,000 reads per sample, and reads were clustered into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) with 97% similarity.…”