Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Asthma is the most common chronic condition associated with pregnancy and its occurrence among pregnant women is increasing. The severity and the lack of control over asthma during pregnancy pose many short and long-term risks to the mother and her baby. Evidence is mounting for a programming role (effect of maternal conditions on developmental consequences in children) for asthma that may involve the infant gut bacteria, which are known to play a critical role in shaping the immune system during early life. Therefore, the goal of my postdoctoral research project is to determine whether asthma during pregnancy, independent of and in combination with maternal diet and medical interventions such as antibiotic treatment, may influence infant gut bacterial composition and metabolic activity, and human milk bacterial composition in a large group of mothers and their infants. This project will use human breast milk, infant fecal samples, and questionnaire data from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) study. Analyses will be performed in a sub-set of 600 mothers and their infants from three sites in Canada. New genomic and metabolic techniques will be applied to profile breast milk and infant gut bacterial communities. Logistic regression modeling methods will be used to test the influence of asthma on outcomes, adjusting for and in interaction with factors such as birth mode, breastfeeding, antibiotic exposure, and maternal diet. The outcomes from this proposed project may provide insight for possible programming pathways of maternal asthma beyond genetics. Knowledge gained from this research will be crucial in improving the management of asthma during pregnancy and preventing future respiratory disease in Canadian children.