Association of Body Mass Index with Fecal Microbial Diversity and Metabolites in the Northern Finland Birth Cohort

Lower fecal microbial richness has been linked to obesity, but the associations of early-life overweight or obesity with the fecal microbiome and its metabolome have not been studied. We used stratified random sampling to select 587 adults from the Northern Finland Birth Cohort by strata of weight history from age 14 to 46 years. The microbiota was characterized from fecal samples collected at age 46, using 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Sequence clustering was performed with DADA2, and diversity metrics were calculated using QIIME 2. A subset of fecal samples (n=340) were analyzed using an untargeted UPLC-MS/MS platform.