Archives of Disease in Childhood. Fetal and Neonatal Edition · 17 authors, 11 centres
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This nested cohort study within a randomised controlled trial assessed the impact of supplemental bovine lactoferrin on the gut microbiome and metabolome of 479 preterm infants born before 32 weeks' gestation. Lactoferrin supplementation had minimal effect on gut microbiome composition, with hospital site and postnatal age explaining far more variation than the intervention.
Gut microbiome Shannon diversity at 34 weeks corrected age was not significantly different between lactoferrin (mean 1.24) and placebo (mean 1.06) groups (p=0.11). Lactoferrin receipt explained less than 1% of variance in microbiome compositions. Hospital site explained 16% and postnatal age 6% of microbiome variation, with site and age explaining up to 40% of volatile organic compound composition variance. Six discriminative metabolomic features were identified between groups. Findings are consistent with the parent RCT showing no impact of lactoferrin on sepsis reduction.
