It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
AUSTIN, Texas — When women and men raise their voices together in the workplace, managers are more likely to support gender equity issues, such as equal pay for equal work. That’s the finding of a new paper from a researcher at The University of Texas at Austin.
In a recent study, Insiya Hussain, an assistant professor of management at UT Austin’s McCombs School of Business, surveyed 3,234 participants during three separate studies.
With colleagues Subra Tangirala of the University of Maryland and Elad Sherf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she asked each group a different set of questions about a range of gender equity proposals, from training women in how to negotiate for higher pay to ensuring that women formed at least 50% of the candidates for leadership positions.
In each of the three studies, participants — including those in managerial roles — reacted more favorably overall to mixed-gender coalitions than to women-only or men-only advocates. This is because:
Mixed-gender coalitions (owing to the participation of men) were able to signal that gender equity is an important issue for the organization.
Additionally, mixed-gender coalitions (owing to the participation of women) were able to signal that they had the right to speak up about gender equity issues.
“This research addresses how best to form an advocacy group to raise these issues, if you want to get results,” Hussain said.
Managers see women as legitimate messengers, Hussain said, because they have personal interests in an issue. But adding men makes the message itself appear more legitimate by indicating that it matters to a wider range of stakeholders.
“When only women advocate for gender equity, it can come across as a niche concern,” she said. “When men speak up about it, they can be seen as lacking the right to protest an issue that doesn’t personally concern them. It’s really when you bring women and men together as advocates that you circumvent both concerns.”
The researchers noted that the effect was limited to women’s issues. When managers were asked to take actions on nongender equity issues, such as training to improve customer service skills, mixed-gender coalitions showed no advantage.
But the lesson might apply beyond women’s issues. Other kinds of socially charged workplace concerns, such as racial justice, could potentially benefit from demographically diverse coalitions. For instance, if a group is trying to advance racial equity in the workplace, a coalition of white and Black employees might be better able to signal both coalition legitimacy and issue legitimacy.
Although women have yet to reach equality in many workplaces, the researchers were encouraged at how seriously the participants took women’s proposals. On the scale from 0 to 7, their levels of support ranged from 4.47 to 5.43.
“If we had run this study 10 or 20 years ago, we might have uncovered much poorer attitudes toward gender equity in general,” Hussain said. “And as the workplace is always evolving, these findings may change 10 or 20 years from now, with more social progress. At least today, though, it helps to recruit men as allies. Gender equity advocacy is most effective when women and men work together.”
Signaling Legitimacy: Why Mixed-Gender Coalitions Outperform Single-Gender Coalitions in Advocating for Gender Equity
‘Years of life lost’ to unintentional drug overdose in adolescents spikes during pandemic
The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a 113% increase in the “Years of Life Lost” among adolescents and young people in the United States due to unintentional drug overdose
COLUMBUS, Ohio – The first year of the COVID-19 pandemic saw a 113% increase in the “Years of Life Lost” among adolescents and young people in the United States due to unintentional drug overdose, according to researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine.
Study findings published online in the Journal of Adolescent Healthalso document the role of fentanyl in rising overdose rates.
Excess mortality was calculated in Years of Life Lost (YLL), which is the difference between the age at which a person dies and their expected remaining lifespan. In 2019, U.S. life expectancy at birth was 78.8 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Mortality due to unintentional overdose in adolescents reached an all-time high in 2020,” said addiction medicine specialist Dr. O. Trent Hall, study corresponding author and an assistant professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ohio State. “The majority of deaths involved fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. The trends depicted in this study signify the need for increased harm-reduction approaches and treatment of opioid use disorder in adolescents.”
The number of adolescent YLL to unintentional drug overdose in the United States more than doubled from 39,579 in 2019 to 84,179 in 2020 – an increase of 113% – after remaining relatively stable between 2016 and 2019. In 2020, the accumulated total of YLL to unintentional overdose surpassed that of cancer, said study first author Dr. Sarah Perou Hermans, clinical instructor in Ohio State’s Department of Internal Medicine.
Synthetic opioids – including primarily illicitly manufactured fentanyl – contributed to 81% of overdose deaths and 68,356 YLL, compared to 67% and 26,628 YLL in 2019. In addition, YLL to unintentional overdose during 2020 was higher for males (59,274) compared to females (24,905), Hermans said.
Researchers obtained data from the CDC’s Wide-Ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research mortality file for years 2016-2020 to investigate unintentional overdose in adolescents aged 10-19.
“Our findings contribute to an emerging body of research documenting adolescent overdose and the impact of fentanyl across communities and this vulnerable population,” Hermans said. “The death of a single adolescent to accidental drug overdose is unacceptable. We have sounded the alarm. Now it is time to start putting out the fire. We hope this study will spur public health officials into action. Our society has to prioritize these young lives.”
This study replicates and extends Hall’s earlier research, “Unintentional Drug Overdose Mortality in Years of Life Lost Among Adolescents and Young People in the US From 2015 to 2019,” published in JAMA Pediatrics in January. That study was the first to use YLL to assessed unintentional drug overdose mortality among adolescents and young people.
“Our study extends on this research by examining trends by year, as well as by gender, age and substances involved. This study then compared unintentional overdoses with other leading causes of adolescent death to further quantify the impact of these mortalities,” said Hermans.
For next steps, the research team intends to study overdose prevention, substance use treatment and harm reduction approaches to stop adolescents dying from overdose.
IMAGE: “THE COST OF CANCER DRUGS IN THE U.S. HAS RAPIDLY INCREASED, EVEN FOR GENERICS. AS A SOCIETY, WE URGENTLY NEED MORE STRATEGIES TO REDUCE CANCER DRUG COSTS WITHOUT COMPROMISING OUTCOMES, AND OUR ANALYSIS PROVIDES QUANTIFIABLE EVIDENCE TO HELP PROVIDERS CHOOSE LOWER PRICED, BUT EQUALLY EFFECTIVE SEQUENCES OF DRUGS,” SAID STEPHANIE B. WHEELER, PHD, MPH.view more
CREDIT: UNC LINEBERGER COMPREHENSIVE CANCER CENTER
CHAPEL HILL, North Carolina -- Giving standard chemotherapy drugs in a specific sequence for some types of metastatic breast cancer can help reduce overall costs and improve the value of care while preserving quality of life, according to a study led by UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center and UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health researchers.
The researchers developed three different computer models to predict how a hypothetical set of 10,000 patients with specific types of metastatic breast cancer would respond to different sequences and types of chemotherapy. For this study, the patient’s cancer was either no longer responding to hormone therapies (endocrine resistant) or was a type of the disease called triple-negative breast cancer.
Currently, there are many chemotherapy choices to treat metastatic breast cancer. Oncologists have some preferences of which drugs to use early in treatment, but there is little clear evidence on the best order in which to give the drugs. The researchers consulted oncologists and experts in the field to choose which chemotherapy drugs were preferred choices to include in the study.
Mimicking clinical practice, and based upon existing data, the researchers then assumed that if a person started treatment with one drug, they would change to a second-choice treatment after their cancer stopped responding to the first drug, or if the side effects weren’t tolerable. The purpose of the study was to test whether putting the drugs in one sequence compared to another could keep the patient on treatment for similar times while decreasing their side effect and/or cost burden.
“The cost of cancer drugs in the U.S. has rapidly increased, even for generics. As a society, we urgently need more strategies to reduce cancer drug costs without compromising outcomes, and our analysis provides quantifiable evidence to help providers choose lower priced, but equally effective sequences of drugs,” said Stephanie B. Wheeler, PhD, MPH, professor of health policy & management at UNC Gillings and associate director of community outreach and engagement at UNC Lineberger and corresponding author of the article. “More spending on cancer care does not necessarily confer greater health benefits.”
The costs calculated in this study were inclusive of medical and nonmedical costs borne by patients, including lost productivity. In this simulation, after two years, nearly all women would have completed the first three sets of treatment, but the cancer would cause the death of about one-third of the women. Productivity days lost due to sickness were similar across chemotherapy sequences, so most of the cost difference was due to drug savings. In the simulation, patients were placed in three groups, depending on what treatments they had already received for earlier episodes of breast cancer.
Outcomes in the three groups were:
For people who had not previously received the common chemotherapy drug categories, including a taxane (e.g., paclitaxel) or an anthracycline (e.g., capecitabine), treatment with paclitaxel then capecitabine followed by doxorubicin corresponded to the highest expected gains in quality of life and lowest costs.
For people who had previously received a taxane and an anthracycline drug, treatment with carboplatin, followed by capecitabine, followed by eribulin, corresponded to the highest expected gains in quality of life and lowest costs.
For people who had previously received a taxane but not an anthracycline, treatment sequences beginning with capecitabine or doxorubicin, followed by eribulin, were most cost-effective.
“The drugs we studied are already recommended and reimbursed for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer, but the optimal sequencing of them has been unclear, which has led to considerable variation in physician preference and practice. Our study suggests that treatment sequencing approaches that minimize costs early may improve the value of care,” Wheeler said. “The implications of this study are fairly straightforward for medical oncologists and those developing value-based clinical pathways to implement in practice now.”
"I hope our study will help expand the framework that we use to make these decisions from one where we just think about the biologic action of the drug to one where we also consider the bigger picture of what the treatment experience is like for the patient, including their financial burden, investment of time, and side effects,” said Katherine Reeder-Hayes, MD, MBA, MSc. “The most potent drug isn’t always the next best choice depending on what the patient values and wants to accomplish with their treatment.”
CREDIT
UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Cente
UNC Lineberger’s Katherine E. Reeder-Hayes, MD, MBA, MSc, section chief of breast oncology and associate professor of medicine at UNC School of Medicine and one of the study’s authors, said the treatment choices for metastatic breast cancer are constantly changing, and new options for targeted therapy have emerged even since this study was conducted. “Many oncologists and patients find that there aren’t any more targeted therapies that fit the cancer’s molecular profiles, so they are left with the choice of a number of chemotherapy drugs that may feel pretty similar or have an unclear balance of pros and cons.
“In that scenario, I hope our study will help expand the framework that we use to make these decisions from one where we just think about the biologic action of the drug to one where we also consider the bigger picture of what the treatment experience is like for the patient, including their financial burden, investment of time, and side effects,” Reeder-Hayes added. “The most potent drug isn’t always the next best choice depending on what the patient values and wants to accomplish with their treatment.”
Looking ahead, the researchers have developed a financial navigation program to further support patients in managing the out-of-pocket costs of their cancer care. This program has been effective and well received by patients, caregivers and providers. The team is currently scaling up the intervention in nine rural and non-rural oncology practices across North Carolina to understand how well it works in different care settings. Cancer patients who need financial support managing the cost of their cancer care are being recruited for this undertaking.
Authors and Disclosures
In addition to Wheeler and Reeder-Hayes, the other authors at UNC are Jason Rotter, PhD; Anagha Gogate, PhD; Sarah W. Drier, MPH; and Justin G. Trogdon, PhD. Donatus U. Ekwueme, PhD, MS and Temeika L. Fairley, PhD, are at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta. Gabrielle B. Rocque, MD, is at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
The research was supported by the CDC through the Prevention Research Centers Program (5-U48-DP005017-04-01).
Wheeler and Reeder-Hayes are members of UNC Lineberger, which has received institutional research funding from Pfizer. Gogate reported employment and stock and other ownership interests in Bristol Myers Squibb/Celgen. Rocque reported consulting or an advisory role with Pfizer, Flatiron Health and Gilead Sciences and receiving research funding from Carevive Systems, Genentech and Pfizer.
No other potential conflicts of interest were reported.
Cost-Effectiveness of Pharmacologic Treatment Options for Women With Endocrine-Refractory or Triple-Negative Metastatic Breast Cancer
ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE
2-Sep-2022
COI STATEMENT
Wheeler and Reeder-Hayes are members of UNC Lineberger, which has received institutional research funding from Pfizer. Gogate reported employment and stock and other ownership interests in Bristol Myers Squibb/Celgen. Rocque reported consulting or an advisory role with Pfizer, Flatiron Health and Gilead Sciences and receiving research funding from Carevive Systems, Genentech and Pfizer. No other potential conflicts of interest were reported.
PLOS and DataSeer expand partnership to better understand researchers’ Open Science practices
SAN FRANCISCO —The Public Library of Science (PLOS) and DataSeer today announced an extended partnership that will provide new insights on how PLOS journals support Open Science practices. Earlier this year, PLOS and DataSeer collaborated on aproject to quantify code sharing at PLOS Computational Biology. This expanded partnership will allow PLOS to assess three key “Open Science Indicators” – code sharing, preprint posting, and sharing of data in repositories – across all its journals and content. And more indicators will be developed next year.
“To increase adoption of Open Science and realize its benefits, we need to understand if researchers have adopted these practices, what the barriers to adoption are, and understand how these differ between communities,” said Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, Director, Open Research Solutions, PLOS. “We are excited to work with DataSeer to better understand the researchers we serve, and help improve adoption of a range of Open Science practices.”
DataSeer will initially analyze more than 66,000 PLOS articles published from 2019 to present, and then repeatedly analyze newly-published content each month. They’ll provide PLOS with information on the use of data repositories, public sharing of code, and sharing of preprints. This is a first of its kind initiative by a publisher and PLOS will share the first set of results when the analysis is completed later this year.
Having already collaborated with DataSeer to adapt their natural language processing and artificial intelligence-driven technology to measure code sharing, DataSeer is now creating capability to analyze preprint sharing, to combine with DataSeer’s proven methodology for assessing research data sharing.
“We are excited to work with PLOS to explore how authors share different research objects with a published article,” said Tim Vines, Founder & Director, DataSeer. “This information is vital to both understanding researchers’ practices and to drive systemic change in research and scholarly publishing.”
PLOS and DataSeer will also look at relevant content outside of PLOS to better assess the same Open Science Indicators at other journals and make comparisons. As well as helping PLOS better serve research communities in their adoption of Open Science practices, PLOS aims to share the Open Science Indicator data with researchers, policy makers, institutions and other publishers to empower them to make informed decisions about their own policies and practices.
The introduction of new solutions for sharingprotocols,code,research data, andpreprints in the last two years is intended to support PLOS’ goal of making Open Sciences practices the norm.
About the Public Library of Science
PLOS is a nonprofit, open access publisher empowering researchers to accelerate progress in science and medicine by leading a transformation in research communication. Since our founding in 2001, PLOS journals have helped break boundaries in research communication to provide more opportunities, choice, and context for researchers and readers. For more information, visit http://www.plos.org.
About DataSeer
DataSeer brings the power and scalability of Artificial Intelligence to promoting Open Science. We help stakeholders like journals, funding agencies, or institutions monitor & showcase their research outputs. We also guide individual researchers through sharing the data, code, and protocols that underlie their articles. Through our partnerships with research stakeholders, DataSeer will empower the Open Science revolution. Find out more at https://www.dataseer.ai/
ResearchGate and EDP Sciences announce content partnership
ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and EDP Sciences, an international academic publisher specializing in scientific, technical, and medical disciplines, today announced a content syndication partnership.
Berlin (Germany) September 13, 2022 – ResearchGate, the professional network for researchers, and EDP Sciences, an international academic publisher specializing in scientific, technical, and medical disciplines, today announced a content syndication partnership that will see the addition of content from over 30 open access (OA) journals to ResearchGate.
The agreement will be piloted for a limited duration and involves the syndication of content from EDP Sciences' open access journals from a range of disciplines, including the Journal of Space Weather and Space Climate, Acta Acustica, and all six Web of Conferences proceedings journals.
Authors of the content will see their articles added automatically to their publication pages on ResearchGate, giving them access to statistics showing the impact of their work, and enabling them to connect with their readers. As well as simplifying the process of uploading work for authors, this partnership helps make sure that the Version of Record is always available.
In time, the overall aim of EDP Sciences is to become a full open access publisher and to transition its entire portfolio of journals into full open access journals. Therefore, any initiatives which facilitate the discovery of new research and make science more open and more accessible are well worth pursuing. In doing this, EDP Sciences recognizes changing research habits and shows it is prepared to support researchers wherever they choose to spend their time and conduct their research.
Agnès Henri, Managing Director, EDP Sciences: “We continuously strive to maximize the reach and impact of our publications and to better fulfill the publishing mandate entrusted to us by society partners. We are confident this partnership with ResearchGate will help us to engage current and future authors and facilitate better connections within our research communities.”
Ijad Madisch, CEO and co-founder of ResearchGate: “Interdisciplinary research is vital to scientific progress. At ResearchGate, we focus on connecting scientists from diverse disciplines so that they can drive this very necessary progress. EDP Sciences has been making research accessible for over a hundred years, and we’re delighted to be working with them to make research from many different fields available on ResearchGate.”
About ResearchGate
ResearchGate is the professional network for researchers. Over 20 million researchers use researchgate.net to share and discover research, build their networks, and advance their careers. Based in Berlin, ResearchGate was founded in 2008. Its mission is to connect the world of science and make research open to all.
EDP Sciences was established in 1920 by a prestigious academic community of French learned societies seeking to inspire, innovate and inform others by sharing their knowledge. Members of this community included eminent scientists like Marie Curie, Paul Langevin and Louis de Broglie. Today, EDP Sciences publishes high-quality scientific journals, conferences proceeding, books and magazines in a broad range of scientific, technical and medical disciplines.
These tiny coral reef fish parents decide when their embryos hatch
VIDEO: A MALE NEON GOBY REGULATES THE HATCHING OF EMBRYOS WITHIN A SPAWNING SHELTER. TO INDUCE HATCHING, THE MALE GOBY PICKS UP EMBRYOS FROM THE CLUTCH USING ITS MOUTH, SWIMS TO THE ENTRANCE OF THE SHELTER AND SPITS FREE-SWIMMING LARVAE INTO THE WATER COLUMN. CREDIT:view more
CREDIT: JOHN MAJORIS
PORT ARANSAS, Texas — Leaving the comfort and safety of home to explore the world is a difficult decision. However, in a tiny coral reef fish called a neon goby, dads help their offspring take the plunge by pushing them out the door when the time is just right.
A new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B from The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute and collaborators, provides the first documented case of a coral reef fish directly regulating when its offspring hatch. Male neon gobies hatch their embryos by removing eggs from the nest with their mouth, transporting the newly-hatched larvae to the opening of the sponge where neon gobies live—and then spitting them out of the sponge entrance.
Hatching is the most vulnerable time in the life of coral reef fishes, which makes choosing when to hatch a crucial decision.
“We often think that eggs are like tiny kitchen timers: they develop for a set period of time, then—ding!—they hatch,” said John Majoris, a research scientist at UT Austin and corresponding author on the study. “But, in many species, embryos have to actively decide when to hatch.”
In the lab, Majoris and colleagues found that neon goby embryos that develop without their parents hatch less synchronously, underdeveloped and up to 50% earlier than embryos cared for by their parents.
Somehow goby parents appear to know the best time for their embryos to hatch: all of the male parents in the study hatched their offspring at sunrise on the seventh day of embryonic development. And embryos that receive parental care waited for their parents to choose the right time for them to hatch.
“Goby embryos are ready and waiting,” Majoris said. “When parents are around, they wait patiently for their dads to make the call that it’s time to hatch.”
Offspring hatched by their parents are larger and more developed than those that hatch on their own, which may give them a fin up when it comes to catching food, escaping predators and navigating the open ocean.
While many fish parents care for their eggs by fanning, guarding and cleaning the nest, this is the first time scientists have discovered a coral reef fish that tells its offspring when to hatch. But it’s possible that parental hatching regulation is more common than previously understood. Cryptobenthic coral reef fishes—a group of tiny, skittish bottom dwellers—often lay their eggs deep in reef crevices, where it is difficult for embryos to judge hatching conditions. In this case, parents can help out by assessing the outside environment and hatching their eggs at just the right time.
“This is a remarkably complex parenting behavior for a tiny fish,” Majoris said. “It goes to show that we still have so much to learn about life in our oceans.”
This research highlights the surprising complexities of fish parenting behavior and provides evidence that, just like humans, fish parents can make adaptive decisions based on the local conditions that influence the survival, resilience and success of their offspring.
John Majoris conducted this research at Boston University and is joined by co-authors Fritz Francisco of the Technical University of Berlin, Simon Brandl of The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science and Corrine Burns, Karen Warkentin, and Peter Buston from Boston University. This work is supported by the National Science Foundation, and a Dana Wright Summer Research Fellowship.
A male neon goby regulates the hatching of embryos within a spawning shelter. To induce hatching, the male goby picks up embryos from the clutch using its mouth, swims to the entrance of the shelter and spits free-swimming larvae into the water column.
CREDIT
John Majoris
Embryos of neon goby fish.
CREDIT
John Majoris
JOURNAL
Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
VIDEO: STUDY: BABY KINDA BABOONS BECOME INDEPENDENT FASTER IF MOMS ARE SOCIAL, DOMINANTview more
CREDIT: VIDEO BY STEVE FILMER/ASU NEWS. IMAGES AND CLIPS COURTESY MEGAN PETERSDORF, LECTURER AT DURHAM UNIVERSITY, AND RUBY MUSTILL, ANTHROPOLOGY STUDENT AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
New research shows female Kinda (kihn-dah) baboons who have strong social connections with other female and male baboons, or are more dominant, have babies who become independent faster than others.
“One possible benefit of this is that if the infant is able to mature faster, it can start feeding independently more quickly,” Schneider-Crease said. “The female can redirect her energy into maintaining her own condition and getting herself ready to get pregnant again and invest in another baby.”
To schedule an interview with Assistant Professor Schneider-Crease please contact us and she can talk more about the Kasanka Baboon Project and her work at ASU.
About ASU Arizona State University has developed a new model for the American Research University, creating an institution that is committed to access, excellence and impact. ASU measures itself by those it includes, not by those it excludes. As the prototype for a New American University, ASU pursues research that contributes to the public good, and ASU assumes major responsibility for the economic, social and cultural vitality of the communities that surround it.
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JOURNAL
Animal Behaviour
ARTICLE TITLE
Stronger maternal social bonds and higher rank are associated with accelerated infant maturation in Kinda baboons
Research of a wild primate shows maternal effects key to gut microbial development
IMAGE: A BABY GELADA FORAGING IN SIMIEN MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK IN ETHIOPIA. THEIR EARLY-LIFE GUT MICROBIOME, FROM INFANCY THRU FIRST YEARS OF LIFE, ARE SHOWN TO BE MATERNALLY INFLUENCED AS THEY GET OLDER.view more
CREDIT: SHARMI SEN
The bacteria that reside in the human gut (“the gut microbiome”) are known to play beneficial and harmful roles in human health. Because these bacteria are transmitted through milk, mothers can directly impact the composition of bacteria that their offspring harbor, potentially giving moms another pathway to influence their infant’s future development and health.
Now, a study of wild geladas (a non-human primate that lives in Ethiopia) provides the first evidence of clear and significant maternal effects on the gut microbiome both before and after weaning in a wild mammal. This finding, published in Current Biology, suggests the impact of mothers on the offspring gut microbiome community extends far beyond when the infant has stopped nursing.
A research team co-led by Stony Brook University anthropologist Dr. Amy Lu, and biologists Dr. Alice Baniel and Dr. Noah Snyder-Mackler at Arizona State University, came to this conclusion by analyzing one of the largest datasets on gut microbiome development in a wild mammal.
They used high throughput DNA sequencing to identify and characterize the bacteria residing in the guts of young geladas, and identified 3,784 different genetic strains of bacteria belonging to 19 phyla and 76 families. However, this diversity was not equally distributed across the developmental spectrum: similar to what is seen in humans, younger infants had the least diverse microbial communities that gradually became more diverse as they got older. These changes reflected what the infant was eating, specifically when they switched from consuming milk to consuming more solid foods. These diet-focused bacteria actually help infants process foods - for instance, milk glycans, which cannot be digested without the help of bacteria.
However, it was the team’s findings of strong maternal effects on the infant gut microbiome both before and after weaning that was the most groundbreaking. “Infants of first-time moms showed slower development of their gut microbiota, meaning that their guts were specialized toward milk digestion for longer compared to kids from other moms. This may put offspring of newer moms at a slight developmental disadvantage,” said Baniel. “In addition, even after infants were weaned, their microbiome community was more similar to mom’s than to other adult females in the population, suggesting that mom’s may be sharing microbes with their offspring.”
According to Lu, “Early life gut microbial development is known to have a large impact on later life health in humans and other model organisms. Now we have solid evidence that mothers can influence this process, both before and weaning. Although we’re not 100% certain how mothers do this, one possible explanation is that they transfer specific bacteria to their offspring.”
According to Snyder-Mackler, “these early life changes might have far-reaching consequences–impacting the health and survival of these offspring once they become adults.” Future work from this research team is therefore going to examine how differences in the gut microbiome during infancy influence other aspects of development, such as growth, the maturation of the immune system, or the pace of reproductive maturation. Luckily, because they are continuing to study the same infants as they age, they’ll eventually be able to link the infant gut microbiome and the early-life maternal effects to health, reproduction, and survival in adulthood.
The research was funded by several grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Leakey Foundation, and from the University of Michigan, Stony Brook University, and Arizona State University.
