Nutrition is Medicine: key players in healthy development

Authors: Yeruva, Laxmi

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 2/29/2024
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: A major focus of the human nutrition program of the USDA is to provide scientific evidence on how diet quality and dietary components are critical in the prevention of chronic disease development. As part of the USDA, our team studies how diet and dietary bioactives interact with the gut microbiota and host and the mechanisms behind the positive health outcomes are being investigated. Specifically, we investigate the role of several pre and postnatal factors on child health. From our studies, maternal factor such as plant versus animal protein intake has shown impact on human milk composition and associated to infants’ gut microbiota composition and growth outcomes. Also, maternal obesity has a role in inflammation markers expression during pregnancy and associated to maternal and infant gut microbiota composition. As for postnatal factors role on child health, our findings from animal and clinical studies highlight that human milk feeding impacts gastrointestinal tract morphology, microbiota composition, metabolite profile, inflammatory cell signaling and regulate microbiota function. Furthermore, we have shown that human milk feeding augments vaccine response in comparison to cow’s milk formula feeding. In addition, we observed that infant microbiota programs gastrointestinal track cell signaling and immune response differently with and without milk bioactives such as human milk oligosaccharides.