Background
respiratory tract infections, infections
RESPIRATORY TRACT INFECTIONS, LRTI, INFECTIONS
Infants are at increased risk of infections, and respiratory tract infections are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality globally [Breastfeeding is the gold standard in infant nutrition and reduces the frequency of episodes of LRTI [In an RCT, we compared the effects of feeding healthy, term infants formula with added prebiotics (FOS and GOS) versus synbiotics (FOS, GOS, and probiotic The objective of this study was to examine the effects of synbiotics on longitudinal infant gut microbiota development in 106 infants using 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing of 324 fecal samples collected at ages 1, 4, 6, and 12 months. At these ages, we also analyzed the fecal metabolome as a functional readout of the synbiotic intervention in 54 infants (193 samples) using a combination of untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry/liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC–MS/LC–MS). Using deep metagenomic sequencing, we took the opportunity to examine the metagenome and antibiotic resistome in fecal samples of 11 infants with LRTI and 11 matched controls (Fig. Overview of study design. Of the 106 included infants, 56 were fed formula with prebiotics (prebiotic group; blue), and 50 were fed the same prebiotic formula with Here, we demonstrate the compositional and functional changes of infant gut microbiota in relation to synbiotic compared to prebiotic feeding and antibiotic-treated LRTI.