| Description: |
Supplementary Material 1. Supplementary Fig. 1. Anthropometrics at birth and enrollment. Anthropometric measurements at a) birth and at b) enrollment. No differences between groups were observed at birth between the groups for any measures. At enrollment, Reference infants had greater measures for BMI, head circumference, length, weight, and weight-for-length (WFL). This was due to the older age of these infants at enrolment compared to the other two study groups. Boxplots represent first (lower), median and third (upper) quartile. ANOVA followed by Tukey’s HSD test. Significance * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. Supplementary Fig. 2. Fecal microbiota development and group differences. A) Operational taxonomic units (OTUs) that correlated with PC1 (|cor|> 0.6) highlighted Lachnospiraceae and Ruminococcaceae were associated with later timepoints while the earlier samples contained a greater abundance of Proteobacteria. B) Alpha diversity was calculated at each timepoint using three different metrics (Observed OTUs, Chao1 and Shannon). Groups were compared with the Kruskal–Wallis test. Significance was obtained at enrollment for both observed OTUs and Chao1 metrics and at 3 months only for observed OTUs. Following pairwise comparisons with Wilcoxon test and BH correction, the Reference group displayed a significantly higher alpha diversity compared to Control (Observed OTUs metric, p = 0.0056 and Chao1 metric, p = 0.0024) at enrollment. Differences between Test and Control groups were close to significance. At 3 months, Reference infants had a significantly lower alpha diversity compared to the Test group (p = 0.0016). The Control group had close to significant lower alpha diversity compared to the Test group (p = 0.072). No significant differences were observed using the Shannon diversity index. Boxplots represent lower, middle (median) and upper quartile. Significance: · p < 0.1, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01. C) Fecal microbial profile differences at the different sampling points. Groups were significantly ... |