Longitudinal analyses of infants' microbiome and metabolome reveal microbes and metabolites with seemingly coordinated dynamics.

Population studies have shown that the infant's microbiome and metabolome undergo significant changes in early childhood. However, no previous study has investigated how diverse these changes are across subjects and whether the subject-specific dynamics of some microbes correlate with the over-time dynamics of specific metabolites. Using mixed-effects models, and data from the ABC study, we investigated the early childhood dynamics of fecal microbiome and metabolome and identified 83 amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) and 753 metabolites with seemingly coordinated trajectories.

From worries to resilience: a qualitative study of the psychosocial experiences of diverse adolescents and young adults with heart failure and their caregivers.

Background And Objectives: Despite advances in treatment and outcomes for paediatric heart failure, both physical and psychosocial comorbidities remain notable among this patient population. We aimed to qualitatively describe the psychosocial experiences of adolescent and young adults with heart failure and their caregivers' perceptions, with specific focus on personal challenges, worries, coping skills, and resilience.

Methods: Structured, in-depth interviews were performed with 16 adolescent and young adults with heart failure and 14 of their caregivers.

Development of the Baby Behaviors when Satiated (BABES) behavioral coding scheme.

Current infant feeding recommendations promote responsive feeding, wherein caregivers respond to infants' cues to determine feeding pace and duration, to support infant self-regulation and healthy weight outcomes. A central tenet of responsive feeding is that infants will effectively signal hunger, receptiveness to feeding, needs to disengage from feeding, and satiation, yet there is a lack of research available to support this assumption. Rather, previous research illustrates substantial variability exists for the extent to which infants exhibit behavioral cues during feeding and that many mothers feel their infants do not clearly communicate satiation, suggesting certain caregivers need tailored support to understand their infants' needs during feeding interactions.

Maternal Mobile Device Use and Mealtime Interactions With Children.

Objective: This study examined (1) whether different types of mobile device use are associated with quantity/quality of parent-child interactions and (2) moment-to-moment changes in quantity/quality of parent-child interactions when devices are used.

Method: In 47 videorecorded home mealtimes conducted in 2011 to 2013, we conducted detailed coding of maternal device use (talking, texting/scrolling, having device on table), frequency of mother and child verbalizations, child bids for attention, and maternal response to bids (contingent, no response, negative response) in 5-second intervals. We examined between-mother differences in parent-child interaction variables for a 10-percentage point increase in each type of device use comparisons using negative binomial or logistic regression.

Leveraging machine learning to study how temperament scores predict pre-term birth status.

Background: Preterm birth (birth at <37 completed weeks gestation) is a significant public heatlh concern worldwide. Important health, and developmental consequences of preterm birth include altered temperament development, with greater dysregulation and distress proneness.

Aims: The present study leveraged advanced quantitative techniques, namely machine learning approaches, to discern the contribution of narrowly defined and broadband temperament dimensions to birth status classification (full-term vs.

Biological and behavioral pathways from prenatal depression to offspring cardiometabolic risk: Testing the developmental origins of health and disease hypothesis.

Given prior literature focused on the Developmental Origins of Health and Disease framework, there is strong rationale to hypothesize that reducing depression in the prenatal period will cause improvements in offspring cardiometabolic health. The current review outlines evidence that prenatal depression is associated with offspring cardiometabolic risk and health behaviors. We review evidence of these associations in humans and in nonhuman animals at multiple developmental periods, from the prenatal period (maternal preeclampsia, gestational diabetes), neonatal period (preterm birth, small size at birth), infancy (rapid weight gain), childhood and adolescence (high blood pressure, impaired glucose-insulin homeostasis, unfavorable lipid profiles, abdominal obesity), and into adulthood (diabetes, cardiovascular disease).

Understanding risk and causal mechanisms for developing obesity in infants and young children: A National Institutes of Health workshop.

Obesity in children remains a major public health problem, with the current prevalence in youth ages 2-19 years estimated to be 19.7%. Despite progress in identifying risk factors, current models do not accurately predict development of obesity in early childhood.

Developmental trajectories of eating behaviors and cross-lagged associations with weight across infancy.

Examining typical developmental trajectories of infant eating behaviors, correlates of those trajectories, and cross-lagged associations between eating behaviors and anthropometry, is important to understand the etiology of these behaviors and their relevance to growth early in the lifespan. Mothers (N = 276) completed the Baby Eating Behavior Questionnaire (BEBQ) and infant anthropometrics were measured at ages 1, 2, 4, 6, and 10 months. Infant and maternal characteristics were collected by maternal report.

Food addiction and dietary restraint in postpartum women: The role of childhood trauma exposure and postpartum depression.

The early postpartum period is a sensitive time for understanding women's high-risk eating (i.e., eating behavior associated with negative health outcomes) given potential long-term eating behavior implications for infants.

Capacity for Regulation of Energy Intake in Infancy.

Importance: The capacity for regulation of energy intake (REI) to match energy needs is thought to contribute to differences in weight gain, and preventing excess infant weight gain is a priority.

Objective: To determine capacity for REI across infancy.

Design, Setting, And Participants: For this cohort study, a convenience sample of mother-infant dyads was recruited from the community in Michigan between 2015 and 2019.

Characterization of a Vigorous sucking style in early infancy and its predictive value for weight gain and eating behaviors at 12 months.

This study sought to identify sucking profiles among healthy, full-term infants and assess their predictive value for future weight gain and eating behaviors. Pressure waves of infant sucking were captured during a typical feeding at age 4 months and quantified via 14 metrics. Anthropometry was measured at 4 and 12 months, and eating behaviors were measured by parent report via the Children's Eating Behavior Questionnaire-Toddler (CEBQ-T) at 12 months.

Associations of maternal food addiction, dietary restraint, and pre-pregnancy BMI with infant eating behaviors and risk for overweight.

Maternal food addiction, dietary restraint, and pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) are associated with high-risk eating behaviors and weight characteristics in children and adolescents. However, little is known about how these maternal factors are associated with individual differences in eating behaviors and risk for overweight in infancy. In a sample of 204 infant-mother dyads, maternal food addiction, dietary restraint and pre-pregnancy BMI were assessed using maternal self-report measures.

Nurturing children's development through healthy eating and active living: Time for policies to support effective interventions in the context of responsive emotional support and early learning.

Fostering the growth, development, health, and wellbeing of children is a global priority. The early childhood period presents a critical window to influence lifelong trajectories, however urgent multisectoral action is needed to ensure that families are adequately supported to nurture their children's growth and development. With a shared vision to give every child the best start in life, thus helping them reach their full developmental potential, we have formed the International Healthy Eating Active Living Matters (HEALing Matters) Alliance.

Simply Dinner: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Home Meal Delivery.

Objective: To determine the effect of a bundled intervention (home meal delivery and provision of cooking/serving resources) on preschoolers' body mass index z-score (BMIz), dietary quality, and family meal frequency.

Methods: Participants (299 families; mean child age 4.4 years, 47% male, 55% White, 18% Black, 27% Hispanic or other race and ethnicity, and 25% were overweight or obese) were randomized to a control group or to provision of cooking/serving resources plus home meal delivery for 12 weeks (meals provided by Meals on Wheels [MOW cohort, n = 83] or a commercial service [COM cohort, n = 216]).

Characteristics of eating behavior profiles among preschoolers with low-income backgrounds: a person-centered analysis.

Background: Individual differences in eating behaviors among young children are well-established, but the extent to which behaviors aggregate within individuals to form distinct eating behavior profiles remains unknown. Our objectives were to identify eating behavior profiles among preschool-aged children and evaluate associations with temperament and weight.

Methods: A secondary, cross-sectional analysis of baseline data from 2 cohort studies was conducted involving 1004 children aged 3-4 years and their parents with low-income backgrounds.

Multiomic Analyses of Nascent Preterm Infant Microbiomes Differentiation Suggest Opportunities for Targeted Intervention.

The first week after birth is a critical time for the establishment of microbial communities for infants. Preterm infants face unique environmental impacts on their newly acquired microbiomes, including increased incidence of cesarean section delivery and exposure to antibiotics as well as delayed enteral feeding and reduced human interaction during their intensive care unit stay. Using contextualized paired metabolomics and 16S sequencing data, the development of the gut, skin, and oral microbiomes of infants is profiled daily for the first week after birth, and it is found that the skin microbiome appears robust to early life perturbation, while direct exposure of infants to antibiotics, rather than presumed maternal transmission, delays microbiome development and prevents the early differentiation based on body site regardless of delivery mode.

Children expect others to prefer handmade items.

Although children frequently engage in creative activities (in which they make foods and objects by hand), the development and scope of children's thinking about handmade items is largely unexplored. In the present studies, we examined whether 4- to 12-year-old children at a local children's museum (54% girls, 46% boys; 51% White, 11% Asian/Asian American, 10% more than 1 group, 4% Latinx, 3% Black/African American, 18% did not report race/ethnicity) would expect other people to prefer handmade over factory-made items, including foods and nonfoods. In Experiments 1 ( = 124) and 2 ( = 122), participants expected a child character to prefer items the character made themselves and items made by the character's parent or a local person.

Infant Distress in a Food Delay Task Changes With Development and Predicts Amount Consumed.

Objective: Eating behavior regulation emerges during early development and involves general self-regulation (emotional, behavioral), appetite regulation (homeostatic metabolic need) and appetite self-regulation (including both Bottom-Up Food Approach and Bottom-Up Food Avoidance and top-down purposeful self-control of eating). Limited research has investigated developmental trajectories of the regulation of eating behavior before the preschool years. The current study used a novel food delay task to assess infant distress as an early emerging marker of eating behavior regulation constructs across early infancy and examine associations with amount of milk consumed.

Supporting family meal frequency: Screening Phase results from the Simply Dinner Study.

We aimed to test main, additive, interactive effects, and feasibility of all possible combinations of six intervention components implemented for 8 weeks (Cooking/Serving Resources; Meal Delivery; Ingredient Delivery; Community Kitchen; Nutrition Education; Cooking Demonstrations). Primary outcomes were family meal frequency and preschoolers' dietary quality; secondary outcomes included family meal preparation type, meal preparation barriers, family functioning, and kitchen inventory adequacy. All possible intervention combinations were tested using a randomized factorial trial design in the first phase of a Multiphase Optimization Strategy (MOST).

A brief child-friendly reward task reliably activates the ventral striatum in two samples of socioeconomically diverse youth.

Adolescence is a period of increased risk-taking behavior, thought to be driven, in part, by heightened reward sensitivity. One challenge of studying reward processing in the field of developmental neuroscience is finding a task that activates reward circuitry, and is short, not too complex, and engaging for youth of a wide variety of ages and socioeconomic backgrounds. In the present study, we tested a brief child-friendly reward task for activating reward circuitry in two independent samples of youth ages 7-19 years old enriched for poverty (study 1: n = 464; study 2: n = 27).

Emerging Ideas Brief Report. How Do Low-Income Mothers Talk to Children About Weight and Body Shape?

Objective: Identify mothers' perceptions of how they talk about weight and body shape with their children and examine how approaches vary by mother and child characteristics.

Background: Youth who report that their parents talk with them about their weight experience poor health. However, very little is known about the content of these conversations.

Patterns of Childhood Body Mass Index Percentile Gains as Predictors of Adolescent Body Mass Index, Waist Circumference, and Blood Pressure.

Objective: To examine whether patterns of body mass index (BMI) percentile gains across childhood predict BMI percentile, overweight and obesity, waist circumference, and elevated or prehypertensive blood pressure at age 15.

Methods: Trained technicians in the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development assessed children's weight and height from birth to 15 years and waist circumference and blood pressure at age 15 (n = 1132). Children's BMI percentile trajectories from age 2 to age 13 along with 28 demographic and social covariates were used to predict BMI percentile, waist circumference, overweight, obesity, and elevated or prehypertensive blood pressure.

Cortisol in early childhood moderates the association between family routines and observed affective balance in children from low-income backgrounds.

The study of emotion regulation often addresses control of negative emotion. Researchers have proposed that affective balance is an indicator of emotion regulation that incorporates the role of positive emotion in the context of negative emotional experiences. Environmental and individual factors, such as family processes and biological stress regulation, are known to shape emotion regulation.