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Residential green environments are associated with human milk oligosaccharide diversity and composition
Scientific Reports, Volume: 13, Issue: 1, Start page: 216
Swansea University Author:
Laura Galante
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© The Author(s) 2023. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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DOI (Published version): 10.1038/s41598-022-27317-1
Abstract
Increased exposure to greener environments has been suggested to lead to health benefits in children, but the associated mechanisms in early life, particularly via biological mediators such as altered maternal milk composition, remain largely unexplored. We investigated the associations between prop...
Published in: | Scientific Reports |
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ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
Published: |
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
2023
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Online Access: |
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URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa68010 |
Abstract: |
Increased exposure to greener environments has been suggested to lead to health benefits in children, but the associated mechanisms in early life, particularly via biological mediators such as altered maternal milk composition, remain largely unexplored. We investigated the associations between properties of the mother’s residential green environment, measured as (1) greenness (Normalized Difference Vegetation index, NDVI), (2) Vegetation Cover Diversity (VCDI) and (3) Naturalness Index (NI), and human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), known for their immune- and microbiota-related health effects on the infant (N = 795 mothers). We show that HMO diversity increases and concentrations of several individual HMOs and HMO groups change with increased VCDI and NI in residential green environments. This suggests that variation in residential green environments may influence the infant via maternal milk through modified HMO composition. The results emphasize the mediating role of breastfeeding between the residential green environments and health in early life. |
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College: |
Faculty of Medicine, Health and Life Sciences |
Funders: |
We would like to thank all the STEPS Study families who took part in the study and mothers who provided milk samples. We are grateful for all the research staff who assisted in the recruitment and data collection. We thank the National Institute of Health (R21-HD088953/L.B.) and the Academy of Finland (grant numbers 329240/J.V. and 321409/H.L.) for funding. Additional funding was received from the Strategic Research Council at the Academy of Finland (grant number 345183 and 345185/M.L.). |
Issue: |
1 |
Start Page: |
216 |