Gut Microbiome Composition and Variance Are Modified by Degree of Growth Failure in Preterm Infants: A Prospective Study

Background/Objectives: Preterm infants often require increased caloric intake to maintain appropriate growth while in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Emerging evidence suggests that alterations of the gut microbiome may play a role in infant and childhood growth patterns. The fecal microbiome patterns in infants with normal and poor growth patterns were classified in this study. Methods: We conducted a prospective trial of infants of less than 29 weeks' gestation with an embedded case-control analysis of infants with normal or poor growth patterns. Fecal samples were collected weekly from infants on full enteral feeds and analyzed blindly using 16s rRNA next-generation sequencing. The relationship between gut microbial diversity and composition and growth pattern and trajectory were assessed. Results: A total of 115 infants were enrolled in the trial with 263 fecal samples selected from 87 enrolled infants for analysis. In total, 37 samples were available from the normal growth cohort, 56 samples from the poor growth cohort, and 170 samples were available for analysis from the very poor growth cohort. Analysis of relative abundance revealed increased representation of Veillonella, Bifidobacterium, and Clostridium in very poor growth infants compared to normal growth infants. Variation in specific taxa was also found to vary significantly across post-menstrual age depending on the degree of growth failure. Conclusions: Gut microbiome composition and variance was modified by the degree of growth failure in our cohort of preterm infants. Our study adds to the growing body of evidence that alteration of the microbiome is associated with poor growth in preterm infants. This may ultimately represent a therapeutic target for growth failure in preterm infants.