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Postnatal nighttime light exposure and infant temperament at age 12 months: mediating role of genus Akkermansia

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Abstract

The gut microbiome has been reported to be associated with nighttime light (NTL) exposure and temperament. However, the specific role of infant gut microbiome plays in NTL exposure and temperament is unclear. This study investigated the potential mediating role of infants’ gut microbiome in correlations between NTL exposure and temperament. Demographic information, stool samples, and temperament scores were collected from 40 infants. Temperament was evaluated using the Infants Behavior Questionnaire-Revised (IBQ-R). The gut microbiota was analyzed using 16S rRNA sequencing. Cumulative and lagged effects of NTL exposure were calculated based on residential address (NTLpoint) and a concentric 1 km radius buffer zone around the address (NTL1000m), respectively. Mediation models were utilized for assessing the mediating effects of the gut microbiome. The gut microbiome of infants with higher fear scores was characterized by a higher abundance of Akkermansia and Clostridium_sensu_stricto_1 and a lower abundance of Bacteroides. Mediation models indicated Akkermansia played a full mediating role in associations between NTLpoint, NTL1000m and fear in specific time periods. Genus Akkermansia explained 24.46% and 33.50% of associations between fear and cumulative exposure to NTLpoint and NTL1000m, respectively. This study provides evidence for the mediating role of Akkermansia between NTL exposure and fear. However, further experimental is required to elucidate the mechanisms through which the gut microbiome mediates between NTL exposure and temperament in infants.

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Data availability

The data presented in this study are openly available in Sequence Read Archive (SRA) database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) with the project number of SRP155310. Other data are available upon reasonable request from the corresponding author.

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Acknowledgements

We were grateful for the technical support from Shanghai Majorbio Bio-pharm Technology Co., Ltd.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 81903334).

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Author notes

  1. Tianlai Qiu, Qingbo Fang and Xuqi Tian contributed equally and share the first authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Women’s and Children’s Health Research, Wuhan University School of Nursing; Research Center for Lifespan Health, Wuhan University, 169 Donghu Road, Wuhan, 430071, China

    Tianlai Qiu, Qingbo Fang, Xuqi Tian, Zijun Feng, Yanan Cao, Yanting Li, Yiming Tu & Yanqun Liu

  2. Emory University Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, 1520 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Jinbing Bai

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  1. Tianlai Qiu
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Contributions

Conceptualization: YL; data curation: TQ, QF, XT, ZF, YC, YL, and YT; formal analysis: TQ and QF; funding acquisition: YL; investigation: YL; methodology: YL and JB; project administration: YL; resources: YL; software: TQ and QF; supervision: YL and JB; validation: TQ and QF; visualization: TQ and QF; roles/writing—original draft: TQ and QF; writing—review & editing: YL and JB.

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Correspondence to Yanqun Liu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Ethical approval

This study was approved by the the Research Ethics Boards of Wuhan University Medical School (Approval code: JKHL2017-03-03; Approval date: 03/03/2017).

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The manuscript was approved by all authors for publication.

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Qiu, T., Fang, Q., Tian, X. et al. Postnatal nighttime light exposure and infant temperament at age 12 months: mediating role of genus Akkermansia. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-024-02445-3

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