Transmission and dynamics of mother-infant gut viruses during pregnancy and early life.

Early development of the gut ecosystem is crucial for lifelong health. While infant gut bacterial communities have been studied extensively, the infant gut virome remains under-explored. To study the development of the infant gut virome over time and the factors that shape it, we longitudinally assess the composition of gut viruses and their bacterial hosts in 30 women during and after pregnancy and in their 32 infants during their first year of life.

Is nutrition science ready for the twenty-first century? Moving towards transdisciplinary impacts in a changing world.

Malnutrition in an obese world was the fitting title of the 13th Federation of European Nutrition Societies (FENS) conference held in October 2019. Many individuals do not eat a healthy, well-balanced diet, and this is now understood to be a major driver of increased disease risk and illness. Moreover, both our current eating patterns and the food system as a whole are environmentally unsustainable, threatening the planetary systems we depend on for survival.

Lifelines NEXT: a prospective birth cohort adding the next generation to the three-generation Lifelines cohort study.

Epidemiological research has shown there to be a strong relationship between preconceptional, prenatal, birth and early-life factors and lifelong health. The Lifelines NEXT is a birth cohort designed to study the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic determinants on health and disease in a four-generation design. It is embedded within the Lifelines cohort study, a prospective three-generation population-based cohort study recording the health and health-related aspects of 167,729 individuals living in Northern Netherlands.

Capable and credible? Challenging nutrition science.

Nutrition science has enriched our understanding of how to stay healthy by producing valuable knowledge about the interaction of nutrients, food, and the human body. Nutrition science also has raised societal awareness about the links between food consumption and well-being, and provided the basis for food regulations and dietary guidelines. Its collaborative and interdisciplinary research has accomplished much, scientifically and socially.