Low Birth Weight Infants.pdfVIP

Beyond Bacteria: A Study of the Enteric Microbial Consortium in Extremely Low Birth Weight Infants Mariam Susan LaTuga1., Joseph Christopher Ellis2., Charles Michael Cotton3,6, Ronald N. Goldberg3,6, James L. Wynn3,6, Robert B. Jackson2,4, Patrick C. Seed3,5,6* 1 Department of Pediatrics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, New York, United States of America, 2 Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, 3 Department of Pediatrics, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, 4 Nicholas School of the Environment and Center on Global Change, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, 5 Center for Microbial Pathogenesis, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America, 6 Jean and George Brumley, Jr Neonatal-Perinatal Research Institute, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, United States of America Abstract Extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants have high morbidity and mortality, frequently due to invasive infections from bacteria, fungi, and viruses. The microbial communities present in the gastrointestinal tracts of preterm infants may serve as a reservoir for invasive organisms and remain poorly characterized. We used deep pyrosequencing to examine the gut- associated microbiome of 11 ELBW infants in the first postnatal month, with a first time determination of the eukaryote microbiota such as fungi and nematodes, including bacteria and viruses that have not been previously described. Among the fungi observed, Candida sp. and Clavispora sp. dominated the sequences, but a range of environmental molds were also observed. Surprisingly, seventy-one percent of the infant fecal samples tested contained ribosomal sequences corresponding to the parasitic organism Trichinella. Ribosomal DNA sequences for the roundworm symbiont Xenorhabdus accompanied these sequences in the infant with the greatest proportion of Trichinella sequences.