Infant gut bacteria study among the most highly-cited articles in 2014

Meghan Azad, assistant professor in the College of Medicine (pediatrics & child health) and coauthors – which include Allan Becker [MD/69], professor in the College of Medicine – are recipients of the Bruce Squires Award for 2014, presented by the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ).

Azad, first author on the study titled: Gut microbiota of healthy Canadian infants: profiles by mode of delivery and infant diet at 4 months, says she was pleasantly surprised when she received news of the award because the article was originally published almost two years ago; at the time Azad was completing her postdoctoral fellowship in pediatrics at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Despite the article’s two-year-old release date, according to the CMAJ website, the award-winning study is one of the most highly-cited (and significantly downloaded) articles in 2014.

Gut microbes clearly play an important role in human health and disease, but microbiome research is a relatively new field and most studies have been conducted in adults, says Azad, a research scientist at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (formerly the Manitoba Institute of Child Health).

“Relatively little is known about how the gut microbiota is established in early life, and we had the unique opportunity to explore this process by partnering with the Canadian Institutes of Child Health (CIHR) Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) Study and the CIHR Microbiome Initiative,” she explains.

CHILD is a national study designed to help identify the root causes of allergy and asthma (in children) including genetic and environmental triggers and the ways in which they interact. The project has five sites across Canada, including Manitoba – which is led by Dr. Becker, co-principal investigator on the CHILD study.

Acknowledging the complexity of decisions regarding method of birth and infant feeding, Azad explains the importance of her team’s results. “Our research identifies the gut microbiota as a new factor (one of many) to be considered in this process.  Our results also suggest new research priorities: for example, when cesarean delivery or formula feeding cannot be avoided, are there ways to “correct” the resulting gut microbiota changes?”

Their study, funded by CIHR and AllerGen NCE, was conducted by the Synergy in Microbiota (SyMBIOTA) team, led by Drs. Anita Kozyrskyj (University of Alberta) and James Scott (University of Toronto), and includes researchers across five universities in Canada, including pediatricians, microbiologists, molecular biologists, immunologists and epidemiologists.

According to CMAJ, the Bruce Squires award is presented annually to the authors of a research article that promotes high standards of reporting and evidence-based medicine. The award honours the late Dr. Bruce Squires who was CMAJ’s editor-in-chief from 1989–96.

“The Bruce Squires Award is given for research that is likely to have a high impact on patient care, so we like to choose research that is either at the beginning of a research story or at the end of a research story,” said CMAJ Editor-in-chief Dr. John Fletcher. “In previous years we have awarded systematic reviews giving the definitive result at the end of a story of research. This year’s winner is a break with tradition in that it is at the beginning of the story of the microbiome and how our gut flora interacts with our immune system and produces disease.” Fletcher said he has high hopes for this area of research in the future.

*With notes from the CMAJ story published on January 7, 2014.