Grant: Master's Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Asthma is the most common chronic disease among children in Canada, resulting in an annual healthcare cost of $2.1 billion. Breastfeeding is known to benefit the health of children but the impact on asthma susceptibility remains poorly understood. Previous work in our laboratory suggested that specific sugars that are variably secreted in the breastmilk of lactating mothers protect their children against asthma. The aim of this study is to identify the biological pathways regulated by these sugars that alter risk of asthma in children. Since microorganisms in human breastmilk are known to feed on these sugars, our study aims to determine how variable sugar concentrations affect the microbial composition of breastmilk and risk of childhood asthma. We will leverage existing data from the CHILD Cohort Study including abundance measures of microbes and sugars from the breastmilk of 1206 lactating mothers. Using established bioinformatics analysis pipelines in our laboratory, we will identify how variable concentrations of sugars change the abundance of microbes in the breastmilk of lactating mothers and in the gut of infants. Then, we will determine which microbes are correlated with increased prevalence of asthma among the breastfed children. This study will provide a better understanding of how breastfeeding impacts asthma risk, and in particular, how milk sugars shape the microbial composition of the breastmilk and infants' gut microbes to modify asthma susceptibility. These breastmilk microbes are modifiable exposures early in infancy and could facilitate the development of novel milk probiotics to promote lung health and reduce risk of childhood asthma.