According to NCBI, different intestinal microbial affect the health from the pre-birth period throughout childhood, and it can cause many diseases related to dysbiosis. Dysbiosis is a condition of the disturbed microbial disorder that results in an imbalanced microbiota that changes the metabolic activities and the functional composition.
1. Gut microbiome and development in Children

The gut microbiome continuously changes from the period of birth to adulthood; several factors affect its development. The competition of the intestinal microbiota also involves developing the immune system, brain, and lungs or body growth. It reviewed the gut microbiome development, dysbiosis promoter, and microbiota link with other organs. The gut microbiome as an organ system affects childhood development linked with disorders in children, including hyperactivity disorder, allergies, and asthma. As you know, childhood development involves the biological, physiological, and emotional changes between birth and the end of adolescence. The development in the growth curve is closely tracked, and there are milestones set to ensure the developmental path.
1.1 Four Stages of Children’s Development
Childhood development involves 4 stages periods: early childhood, preschool years, middle childhood, and adolescence. Fluctuations in the milestones of development stages are a disease development sign, including ASD ( autism spectrum disorder) and food allergies, obesity, malnutrition, and social development delay. All of these issues are linked with the gut microbiome factors. So, the gut microbiome and childhood development interact and have a link between them.
2. Factors that affect microbiome development in childhood
The microbiome is less stable and less diverse in the infancy period than that of adults. The microbiome of infancy depends on factors that include the mode of delivery, medication exposure, environment, and milk consumption.
During childhood, stability and diversity increase. Next, in adolescence, the gut microbiome has fewer aerobes and facultative anaerobes and an increase in anaerobic species. The conclusion is that physiological and environmental stimulation induces changes.
2.1 CNS (Central Nervous System) Development
Bioactive metabolites are created by the macrobiotic in the gut and act as neurotransmitters; dopamine nor Adernaliine, acetylcholine, and GABA are produced by gut microbiota. Microglia are inherent to neurotic development in pre-birth and from birth to adolescence. Microglia, CNS macrophages, play a crucial role in immunity, neuroprotection, phagocytosis, and synaptic pruning. It will need to derive neuroinflammation that is linked with systemic inflammation.
Microbiome development is parallel to neurodevelopment progress. Dysbiosis leads to changes in a metabolite profile and impacts CNS communication, inflammation, brain immune function, and functionality of the blood-brain barrier.
Low microbiota growth in infants alters neurotransmitter pathways, increasing neuroinflammation and decreasing Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1).
2.2 Immune system development

The microbiome benefits the immune system and provides resistance to pathogen colonization. The microbiota decreases the efficiency of the drugs and immune system and changes the body’s response to pathogens. The immune system is crucial for the body system. The gut microbiome has a larger surface area of exposure and is essential for immunity function. Education of the immune system and establishment of tolerance to commensal organisms is a part of the infancy and early childhood phase. Also, it develops the ability of the host to defend itself from pathogens.
Initially, the innate immune system protects the infants and controls the association of the host and microbiome in a general manner. This symbiotic connection between gut bacteria and humans is helpful in maintaining the homeostasis function in the body. MAMPs1 primarily promotes innate cells and functions them to handle general responses to subsequent pathogenic exposures. Gut-associated lymphoid tissues are front liners in gut mucosal defense and are structured by gut microbiota.
Passive transmission of the pre-biotics microbes and immunoglobins in the mother’s breast milk is vital for immune protection in infants.
Alternation of Gut
When infants start to eat solid foods, the microbiome structure changes to that of an adult. Alteration of the gut microbiome is essential in developing the immune system and promotes the immune tolerance to commensal bacteria that is more powerful now. Researchers associate modifications in the gut microbiome with asthma and allergies. They suggested the “Hygiene hypothesis” for early microbial exposure to shape immune development. This hypothesis claims that medications limiting early-stage infections prevent the natural immune system from developing properly. This causes allergic diseases to develop. Researchers modified the hypothesis to the “microflora hypothesis,” stating that the overly hygienic Western lifestyle limits microbial exposure, alters the infant gut microbiome, and disrupts immune development, leading to allergic diseases. The gut microbiome also changes the response if it is immune to vaccines.
2.3 Development of functions in the lungs

Observation claims that changes in the gut microbiota influence lung diseases. Gut microbiota derives the SCFA that inhibits the lung inflammation mechanism mediated by the liver. The most studied disease related to the gut lungs is asthma, the most common childhood disease. Researchers conducted a study to review the lifestyle of two US agricultural populations, the authorities, and the Amish. Amish children had lower asthma rates attributed to increased microbe exposure from contact with farm animals.
The primary target of the protection was an innate immune system in the Amish children, demonstrating that asthma is associated with a high level of neutrophils and a low level of eosinophils.
Recently, two studies in the USA and Ecuador revealed fungal dysbiosis as a reason for infant gut microbiota related to the development of asthma in childhood.
3. Future Pathways
Microbial primarily focuses on bacterial taxonomy, and their studies are relatively new. The microbiome includes the fungome and virome. Ongoing research on the interpretive contribution of both will be necessary, moving ongoing research to the interpretive contribution of moving forward as the development of new science and technology and genetic databases emerge.

Besides utilizing gut microbiome data, his interest in the interaction between microbe and eukaryotic hosts is growing. As the knowledge and field expand, each new frontier adds complexity and offers hope to understand biological, genetic, and environmental factors influencing childhood development. There needs to be more knowledge of understanding how these organisms implement their effect, and the mechanism by which we can try to cover the gap is through metabolomics. At the same time, We discuss gut microbes producing different bioactive metabolites and their effects on the developing respiratory and immune systems and growth development.
Future modulation includes dietary supplements such as limiting exposure and using the microbiome as a maker for precision, medicine, and probiotics.
All those studies exist in the literature in the field of omics, but these mechanisms still need further research and analysis.Clinical studies are needed to understand how alterations in intestinal microbes affect healthy children and those with diseases, given limited knowledge of microbiome function and its link to gut dysbiosis and disease development in childhood.
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4. Conclusion
The gut microbiome plays a vital role in childhood development, influencing the immune system, brain, and overall growth. An imbalance in the gut microbiota, known as dysbiosis, links to various health issues including allergies, asthma, and neurodevelopmental disorders. Factors like mode of delivery, diet, and environment significantly impact microbiome stability and diversity from infancy to adolescence.
Future research and clinical studies are essential to fully understand the microbiome’s mechanisms and develop effective interventions, including dietary supplements and probiotics, to promote healthy childhood development.