Association of Long-Term Habitual Dietary Fiber Intake since Infancy with Gut Microbiota Composition in Young Adulthood

Abstract

<p><strong>Background: </strong> Dietary fiber is an important health-promoting component of the diet, which is fermented by the gut microbes that produce metabolites beneficial for the host's health.</p><p><strong>Objectives: </strong> We studied the associations of habitual long-term fiber intake from infancy with gut microbiota composition in young adulthood by leveraging data from the Special Turku Coronary Risk Factor Intervention Project, an infancy-onset 20-y dietary counseling study.</p><p><strong>Methods: </strong> Fiber intake was assessed annually using food diaries from infancy ≤ age 20 y. At age 26 y, the first postintervention follow-up study was conducted including food diaries and fecal sample collection (N = 357). Cumulative dietary fiber intake was assessed as the area under the curve for energy-adjusted fiber intake throughout the study (age 0-26 y). Gut microbiota was profiled using 16S ribosomal ribonucleic acid amplicon sequencing. The primary outcomes were 1) α diversity expressed as the observed richness and Shannon index, 2) β diversity using Bray-Curtis dissimilarity scores, and 3) differential abundance of each microbial taxa with respect to the cumulative energy-adjusted dietary fiber intake.</p><p><strong>Results: </strong> Higher cumulative dietary fiber intake was associated with decreased Shannon index (β = -0.019 per unit change in cumulative fiber intake, P = 0.008). Overall microbial community composition was related to the amount of fiber consumed (permutational analysis of variation R² = 0.005, P = 0.024). The only genus that was increased with higher cumulative fiber intake was butyrate-producing Butyrivibrio (log₂ fold-change per unit change in cumulative fiber intake 0.40, adjusted P = 0.023), whereas some other known butyrate producers such as Faecalibacterium and Subdoligranulum were decreased with higher cumulative fiber intake.</p><p><strong>Conclusions: </strong> As early-life nutritional exposures may affect the lifetime microbiota composition and disease risk, this study adds novel information on the associations of long-term dietary fiber intake with the gut microbiota. This trial was registered at clinicaltrials.gov as <a href="http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00223600" title="See in ClinicalTrials.gov">NCT00223600</a>.</p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong> dietary fiber; gut microbiota; long-term habitual diet; microbiota composition; microbiota diversity.</p>