LUKAS birth cohort living-room floor dust sequencing. LUKAS

LUKAS study comprises two birth cohorts, LUKAS1 and LUKAS2. In LUKAS1 (N=214) equal numbers of pregnant mothers living in farms with livestock and mother’s living in rural areas but not in farms were recruited in the major local hospitals in eastern and middle Finland (Kuopio, Iisalmi, Jyväskylä and Joensuu) between September 2002-May 2004. The inclusion criteria were maternal age ≥18 years, singleton pregnancy, native language Finnish, no plans to move from the study area, expected delivery in one of the study hospitals, siblings of the study child not participating in the study, parturition at ≥37 weeks of gestation, no congenital abnormalities in newborn and successful cord blood sampling. In LUKAS2 all pregnant women with estimated delivery at Kuopio University Hospital between May 2004 and May 2005 were invited to join the study without selection by occupation or area of living. Mothers living in apartments were excluded to maintain housing conditions comparable with LUKAS1. The living room floor dust samples were collected By vacuuming at index child age of 2 months. DNA was extracted from sieved dust using bead beating method. The bacterial/archaeal 16S rRNA gene V4 region was amplified using 515F/806R primers and fungal ITS region by ITS1F/ITS2 primers.These DNA amplicons were sequenced as 300 base pair paired-end reads with Illumina MiSeq V3 chemistry.