Publications by authors named "Anniina Keskitalo"
Background: Dietary fiber is an important health-promoting component of the diet, which is fermented by the gut microbes that produce metabolites beneficial for the host's health.
Objectives: We studied the associations of habitual long-term fiber intake from infancy with gut microbiota composition in young adulthood by leveraging data from the Special Turku Coronary Risk Factor Intervention Project, an infancy-onset 20-y dietary counseling study.
Methods: Fiber intake was assessed annually using food diaries from infancy ≤ age 20 y.
Article Synopsis
- Research shows that early gut microbiota composition (GMC) in infants can influence their temperament and behavior, potentially affecting the risk of later psychiatric disorders.
- The study analyzed stool samples from 330 infants to assess gut microbiota and used specific assessments at 8 and 12 months to measure negative and fear reactivity.
- Findings indicated a connection between gut diversity and fear reactivity, with significant microbial differences noted in boys' negative reactivity, highlighting the need for further research on how gut microbiota relates to temperament.
Article Synopsis
- Animal studies indicate a two-way communication between gut microbiota and the HPA axis, but human research, particularly in young children, is still limited.* -
- This study examined the relationship between HPA axis activity (measured by hormone levels in hair) and gut microbiota profiles in healthy toddlers, revealing associations with specific gut bacteria but not with overall diversity.* -
- The results suggest that the functioning of the HPA axis may influence certain gut bacterial populations, but further investigation is needed to understand the implications for child health and development.*
Article Synopsis
- Saliva is shown to be a viable alternative to nasopharyngeal swabs (NPS) for detecting SARS-CoV-2, with a high level of agreement in diagnostic results between the two methods during a clinical study involving 250 participants.
- Both collection methods detected the virus in a similar number of participants (135 for NPS vs. 134 for saliva), though NPS provided slightly more sensitive results.
- A majority of participants (69%) found saliva sampling to be more comfortable than NPS, despite some challenges in producing an adequate saliva sample, highlighting the potential for more user-friendly testing options in COVID-19 diagnostics.
Article Synopsis
- - The STRIP project, a lengthy study on dietary counseling, aimed to reduce heart disease risk by promoting a heart-healthy diet from infancy through sustained guidance over 20 years.
- - Researchers analyzed the gut microbiota of 357 participants six years after the dietary intervention ended, using advanced sequencing techniques, to see if long-term dietary changes had lasting effects.
- - While no overall differences were found between intervention and control groups, the Veillonella genus was notably more abundant in the intervention group, with significant findings seen only in male participants, highlighting potential links between diet and gut health.
Human brain and intestinal microbes reportedly maintain a constant bidirectional connection through diverse neural, endocrine, immune, and metabolic pathways. Increasing evidence indicates that this communication system, referred to as microbiota-gut-brain axis, enables the gut microbes to influence several aspects of brain function and behavior, including hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis stress responses, and on the other hand, stress can affect gut microbiota. However, the role of gut microbiota in the HPA axis functioning in humans remains to be specified especially in early life.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gut microbiota has been suggested to influence neurodevelopment in rodents. Preliminary human studies have associated fecal microbiota composition with features of emotional and cognitive development as well as differences in thalamus-amygdala connectivity. Currently, microbiota-gut-brain axis studies cover heterogenous set of infant and child brain developmental phenotypes, while microbiota associations with more fine-grained aspects of brain development remain largely unknown.
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- Maternal prenatal stress has been linked to infant development, with potential mechanisms involving changes in the gut microbiota of infants, as seen in both animal and some human studies.
- The study collected data from pregnant mothers using standardized questionnaires to assess psychological distress and measured stress hormones (hair cortisol concentration) during pregnancy, analyzing infant fecal samples for microbiota composition at 2.5 months old.
- Results showed that chronic maternal psychological distress was positively associated with certain potentially harmful bacteria and negatively correlated with beneficial bacteria in infants, indicating that maternal stress may alter infant gut health.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) and cachexia are associated with the gut microbiota and microbial surface molecules. We characterized the CRC-associated microbiota and investigated whether cachexia affects the microbiota composition. Further, we examined the possible relationship between the microbial surface molecule flagellin and CRC.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSince February 2019, over 160 (CT) cases testing negative or equivocal by Aptima Combo 2 (AC2) but positive by Aptima CT test run with Panther instruments occurred in Finland. The AC2 test targets chlamydial 23S rRNA while the CT test targets 16S rRNA. Sequencing of 10 strains revealed a nucleotide substitution in 23S rRNA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: One of the key behavioral phenotypes in infancy are different temperament traits, and certain early life temperament traits have been shown to precede later mental health problems. Differences in the gut microbiota composition (GMC) have been suggested to link with neurodevelopment. For example, toddler temperament traits have been found to associate with differences in GMC; however, studies in infants are lacking although infancy is a rapid period of neurodevelopment as well as GM development.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent studies suggest that exercise alters the gut microbiome. We determined whether six-weeks endurance exercise, without changing diet, affected the gut metagenome and systemic metabolites of overweight women. Previously sedentary overweight women ( = 19) underwent a six-weeks endurance exercise intervention, but two were excluded due to antibiotic therapy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To investigate dietary effects on the gut microbiota composition in a rat model of nonbacterial chronic prostate inflammation (CPI).
Materials And Methods: Nonbacterial CPI was induced in the Wistar rat strain with subcutaneous testosterone and 17β-oestradiol (E ) hormone pellets for 18 weeks. Rats with placebo pellets served as healthy controls.
Accumulating evidence indicates that gut microbiota plays a significant role in obesity, insulin resistance and associated liver disorders. Family Enterobacteriaceae and especially Enterobacter cloacae strain B29 have been previously linked to obesity and hepatic damage. The underlying mechanisms, however, remain unclear.
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