How gut bacteria and stress shape child development
Description: We share our bodies with millions of bacteria, e.g. in our noses, skin, intestines. The intestinal bacterial communities, or gut microbiota, establish themselves in early life (colonization) and are essential for nutrition, intestinal function, and immunity. Remarkably, recent animal studies show that the gut microbiota also influences brain functioning, behavior, and cognition. In humans, first studies show that consuming beneficial bacteria improves mood, reduces cortisol (stress hormone), and even modifies brain functioning.
Early life stress precipitates later (psycho)pathology. Intestinal microbiota may substantially mediate these relations, as psychological stress negatively affects gut microbiota. Unbalances in microbiota, in turn, are associated with (psycho)pathology, e.g. autism, depression, anxiety, obesity. To understand these potential mechanisms, however, it is essential to know how microbes colonize healthy infants, how sensitive this process is to stress, and how it relates to later development. Such studies are virtually non-existent.
My overarching goal is to develop this completely novel stress-microbiota-development field by studying healthy children’s microbial colonization in relation to stress early in life and later brain structure and function, behavior, and cognition.
My three specific aims are:
1) to test a new psychobiological model of human development in which early life gut microbiota mediates the associations between stress early in life and adolescent brain, behavior, and cognition.
2) to study two potential causal mechanisms through which maternal psychological stress, as an early life stress-inducing factor, can negatively affect infant microbial colonization and development.
3) to gain further insight into causality by testing whether two naturalistic stress-reducing intervention programs based on caregiver-infant physical contact, can positively affect infant microbial colonization and development.
I will use diverse methodologies and longitudinal hypothesis-driven studies, and importantly, will determine whether stress-reducing interventions positively shape microbial colonization. Because the infant brain is rapidly developing, naturalistic interventions constitute promising innovative approaches to positively guide development.
Funding type: fellowship
Funder scheme: NWO-Talentprogramma Vici Sociale en Geesteswetenschappen 2017
Start date: 2019-01-01
End date: 2024-12-31
Investigator: Carolina Weerth
Institution: Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen
Funded outputs count: 83
Funder award ID: 016.Vici.185.038
OpenAlex ID: G4726569137