Gut Microbiome Potential for Acetate Fermentation is Associated with Caregiving Adversity and Health in Childhood

Event: International Society for Developmental Psychobiology 2024 Meeting
Location: Chicago, IL, USA
Authors: : Francesca R. Querdasi, Naomi N. Gancz, Kristen A. Chu, Emily Towner, Eason Taylor, Julianne Yang, Jonathan Jacobs, Bridget L. Callaghan Abstract:
Disruption to the gut microbiome is a potential mechanism through which exposure to early caregiving adversity (CA) elevates risk for internalizing (i.e., depression and anxiety) disorders. However, important questions remain surrounding when in development this relationship emerges and the specific mechanistic pathways within the gut microbiome that are involved. Most prior research in childhood has exclusively examined gut microbiome composition, which provides limited insight into mechanistic pathways because of ambiguity surrounding the function of each microbial species. Compositional research suggests that fermentation to short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) may be a microbial function particularly impacted by adversity and involved in internalizing symptoms. In this study, we directly test microbial functional potential for fermentation to SCFAs as a mechanism in the association between CA exposure and internalizing symptoms in middle childhood to adolescence, an important developmental period for internalizing symptom emergence. Our sample consists of N = 125 youth aged 6-16 years. Roughly half were exposed to time-limited CA (maltreatment and caregiving instability); the other half were not and served as the comparison group. Youth donated a stool sample, and a caregiver completed questionnaires on children’s internalizing symptoms and fatigue, a physical symptom that is often comorbid with internalizing disorders. Following shotgun metagenomics sequencing of DNA extracted from stool, we performed functional annotation of the metagenome with HUMaNn3. We will present results of hypothesis-driven analyses testing links between adversity, overall potential for fermentation to SCFAs, as well as potential for each step within the fermentation pathways, and symptoms using linear modeling.