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Melding microbiome and nutritional science with early child development

Programs for treating malnutrition in children should consider how food formulations affect postnatal gut microbiome development.

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Fig. 1: An approach for designing and testing MDCFs for treating childhood malnutrition.

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Acknowledgements

Work performed in the authors’ labs described in this Comment was supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the US National Institutes of Health. We are indebted to our fellow investigators of the Breast Milk, Gut Microbiome and Immunity Project, including N.N. Naila, M.M. Islam, S. Huq, M.A. Alam, M.U. Zaman, H.-W. Chang, Y. Wang, A. Osterman, D. Rodionov, C. Newgard and C. Lebrilla.

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The Comment was written by R.Y.C. and J.I.G. with input from all co-authors.

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Correspondence to Jeffrey I. Gordon.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Chen, R.Y., Mostafa, I., Hibberd, M.C. et al. Melding microbiome and nutritional science with early child development. Nat Med 27, 1503–1506 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-021-01451-1

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