Theme: Impact of early food diversification on the composition of the gut microbiota in infants during the first 200 days of life from three municipalities in the District of Abidjan

Abstract The gastrointestinal microbiota plays a crucial role in host health and disease through its impact on nutrition. Gut microbial composition is linked to different diets, but an association of gut microbiota with different infant diets has been lightly studied. In this work, we compared the faecal microbiota of breastfed infants receiving dietary diversification (LM+DA), infants fed formula milk combined with complementary foods (LA+DA) and infants on a mixed breastfeeding diet accompanied by food supplements (LM+LA+DA). Differences in gut microbiota were found between the three groups using Illumina high-throughput sequencing. Actinobacteria and Bacteroides are the most dominant phyla in all three groups. However, Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes are less represented in infants on LA+DA diets. For infants on the LM+DA diet, Bifidobacterium (17.84%), Escherichia-Shigella (9.37%) and Streptococcus (7.4%) dominate more, whereas in LA+DA infants, the domination is observed with Bifidobacterium(24.33%), Escherichia-Shigella (14.35%). Finally, LM+LA+DA infants are also Bifidobacterium(14.99%), Escherichia-Shigella (9.17%) and Streptococcus (7.68%) which dominate (p=0.05). In addition, at age level, there is a significant difference (p<0.05). Between 0-119 daysBifidobacterium (15.70%), Enterobacteriaceae (11.28%) dominate; between 120-179 days Bifidobacterium (20.62%) and Enterobacteriaceae (8.95%) which also dominate, but in lower proportions compared to infants of 0-119 days. Finally, at 200 days, Bifidobacterium (14%) and Enterobacteriaceae (9.31%) also dominate, but in low proportions.