Contact
Viggó Marteinsson
Research Group Leader
viggo@matis.is
Knowledge of the role of the human microflora has increased significantly in recent years, and the results of research indicate that various environmental factors are decisive in the development and composition of the microflora in the digestive tract in the first years of life. However, there is little knowledge of how nutrition during pregnancy and breastfeeding affects the development of the microflora, in particular there is a lack of research that can take into account information about complications during pregnancy, mode of delivery, breastfeeding, children's first exposure to food in solid form and food choice until primary school age. The IceGut project will add to this knowledge in an interdisciplinary way by studying the intestinal flora of 8% children born in Iceland in 2018. The development of the microflora and its metabolic processes in the digestive tract will be studied from birth and regularly during the first five years of the children's lives, and the results will be linked to information about nutrition during pregnancy, during breastfeeding as well as feeding the babies themselves. Special emphasis will be placed on the characteristics of the Icelandic diet, which is always rich in fish meat and fish oil (sources of vitamin D and omega 3 fatty acids), while the consumption of whole grain products is low. The latest techniques in sequencing and metabolomics will be applied to analyze the composition of the microbial flora, its genome and metabolism. The IceGut project will lead to new knowledge about the relationship between the development of the microflora and metabolic processes during the first years of life during the consumption of individual nutrients. This will be the first study of gastrointestinal microflora in the Icelandic population of children.