Grant: Doctoral Research Award: Canada Graduate Scholarships

Asthma affects over 339 million people worldwide and is the most common chronic disease among Canadian children with a prevalence of 14%. Asthma is a leading cause of hospitalizations, resulting in an annual healthcare cost of $2.1 billion in Canada. Breastfeeding is known to benefit the health of children but its impact on asthma susceptibility remains poorly understood. Previous work in the CHILD Cohort Study indicated that lactating mothers secrete variable concentrations of breast milk components such as sugars and fats. The aim of this study is to investigate how variable concentrations of such breast milk components influence the risk of asthma in milk-fed children. Specifically, our study aims to characterize how these milk sugars and fats affect the microbial composition of breast milk in mothers whose milk-fed children develop asthma compared to mothers whose children do not develop asthma. We will leverage existing data from the CHILD Cohort Study including abundance measures of microbes, sugars, and fats from the breast milk of 1206 lactating mothers. Using established bioinformatics analysis pipelines in our laboratory, we will identify how variable concentrations of sugars and fats alter the abundance of microbes in the breast milk of lactating mothers and in the gut of infants. Then, we will determine which microbes are correlated with the increased prevalence of asthma among the breastfed children. This study will provide a better understanding of how human milk composition impacts asthma risk, and in particular, which specific sugars and fats shape the microbial composition of breast milk and infants' gut microbes to modify asthma susceptibility. These breast milk components and microbes are modifiable exposures early in infancy and could facilitate the development of novel milk probiotics to promote lung health and reduce the risk of childhood asthma.