PhD student UCBM participates in the project promoted by the Comitans Foundation
15 February 2021 - Study composition in first thousand days of life of the intestinal bacterial flora, the so-called "microbiota", is the objective of the project of the Gastroenterology Unit UCBM promoted by the Comitans Foundation. The study refers in particular to the modifications of the intestinal bacterial species due to external factors such as breastfeeding, weaning, the administration of lactic ferments and antibiotics. "We are happy to be part of this project and we are grateful to the Comitans Foundation because it will be possible to professionally grow a young nutritionist biologist who graduated from our University who will be able to enjoy a doctoral scholarship in Science and Engineering for Man and the Three-year environment” explains the prof. Michele Guarino, of the Gastroenterology Unit of the Campus Bio-Medico University Hospital.
“The first thousand days of life are the days in which the child passes from an exclusively milky diet to an adult-type diet during weaning, i.e. the gradual and progressive transition to the experience of taking solid and liquid foods in different ways from sucking to the breast” explained the PhD candidate Giulia Rocchi.
The child's exposure to these new environmental and food factors is able to modulate the development and evolution of the intestinal microbiota." The good food practices that are carried out and acquired in the first thousand days of life will be precisely those that will lead us to health also in adult life and not only in childhood" concludes the researcher.
“The first period of life – adds Prof. Guarino – it is considered as a 'window opportunity', a window useful for modulating the microbiota. In the first three years of life, in fact, the bacterial profile that will be present in adulthood is defined, which we know consists mainly of two large families, called phyla, of Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes".
