Gut microbiome in population cohorts – shaping factors and associations with health

Abstract

The gut microbiome is highly variable between individuals and closely linked to health throughout life. In my group, we study how the gut microbiome develops from pregnancy to old age and how different factors shape the gut ecosystem in health and disease. In this lecture, I will first present our analyses of the large adult population cohort Lifelines, focusing on the roles of host genetics and environmental exposures in shaping the gut microbiome and on its associations with disease. I will then discuss our major early-life project, the parent–infant cohort LLNEXT, which includes 1,450 mother–infant pairs followed longitudinally from pregnancy through the first year of life, with extensive multi-omics profiling. Our analyses show that early-life bacterial and viral communities are highly dynamic and are shaped primarily by delivery mode, feeding practices, parity, pre-pregnancy smoking, and delivery duration. Infants share a substantial proportion of bacterial and viral strains with their mothers’ gut microbiota, while fewer strains originate from breast milk and the vaginal microbiome. We also identified associations between maternal and early-life microbial signatures and the development of infant eczema. Together, these findings provide new insights into the factors shaping the gut microbiome across the life course and its links to health.