Bacterial Metagenomic DNA from Preterm Infant Stool

Human milk feeds for very low birth weight (VLBW, <1500g) infants are routinely enriched with bovine milk-based fortifiers (BMBF) to support infant growth; however, there is increasing interest to use human milk-based fortifiers (HMBF), despite their limited efficacy data. It is currently unclear how these different fortifiers impact the gastrointestinal microbiota of VLBW infants. The OptiMoM Fortifier Study (NCT02137473) is a double-blind, randomized clinical trial of infants born <1250g that were fed mother's milk and supplemental pasteurized donor milk enriched with either BMBF or HMBF. As part of this study, we profiled the bacterial composition of infant stool samples for 8 weeks postnatally to determine how these different fortifiers impact the developing microbiota of VLBW infants.