A staggering 3 million children die from malnutrition across the globe each year, with many more left with long-lasting deficits in their growth and development. Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD – widely regarded as the father of the microbiome – has dedicated his life’s work to changing this paradigm. Gordon, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis — along with WashU colleague Michael J. Barratt, PhD, a team of collaborators led by Tahmeed Ahmed MBBS, PhD, at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), and a host of graduate students, postdoctoral researchers and staff scientists in Gordon’s lab — have developed a treatment for childhood malnutrition that nurtures the beneficial microbes in the gut, with the aim of more effectively treating the condition.
After success in early clinical trials led by Ahmed in Bangladesh, the innovative “microbiome-directed” food the team has developed will be evaluated in major randomized controlled trials funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and carried out in collaboration with the World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). The trials will involve nearly 20,000 children in seven countries in South Asia and Africa: Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Mali, Tanzania, Burkina Faso and Niger.
Earlier studies have shown that this treatment — a supplementary food with soybeans, chickpeas, peanuts and bananas as key ingredients — improves weight and height recovery in malnourished children more effectively than a traditional nutrient-dense, high-calorie food typically used to treat malnutrition. Gordon’s work has shown that beneficial strains of gut bacteria that support growth and development in infants and children thrive on specific biochemical components in these foods.
In addition, the team found that malnourished children receiving the microbiome-directed therapeutic food in earlier trials had higher levels of blood proteins involved in neurodevelopment and musculoskeletal growth, and lower levels of inflammatory proteins than children receiving a traditional nutritional intervention for malnutrition. Together, these results suggest that the effects of microbiome repair through food formulation extend far beyond the walls of the gut.
“Far too many children are still dying of malnutrition, and those who survive face lifelong consequences — stunted growth, neurological problems and immune system deficiencies, among others,” said Gordon, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and director of the Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology. “These children are deprived of the ability to reach their full potential because of the devastating effects of malnutrition. There is an enormous need for better treatments that we hope to address.”