Gut microbiota, SCFA and nutritional intake in stunted children in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia

We recently showed that the gut microbiota composition in a cross-sectional study of 36-45 month old stunted children was different from that of normal children in East Nusa Tenggara, Indonesia. Here, we compared anthropometric measures and nutritional intake, and we correlated percent macronutrient intake to fecal short-chain (SCFA) and branched-chain fatty acids (BCFA) concentrations, and gut microbiota composition in this cohort. The concentrations of the SCFA acetate and propionate are significantly lower in feces of stunted children, while butyrate and BCFA showed no difference. Moreover, percentage fat-intake correlated negatively to fecal propionate ( q = 0.007; rho = -0.23) and butyrate ( q = 0.041; rho = -0.18) concentrations, while percent fibre-intake, as expected, positively correlated with butyrate concentrations ( q = 0.0001; rho = +0.30). There was a trend for percent carbohydrate-intake to positively correlate with fecal butyrate concentrations too ( q = 0.067; rho = +0.18). In addition, 48 of the 124 taxa in the dataset showed correlations with one or more of the nutritional intake parameters (percent energy, protein, fat, carbohydrate or fibre). Of the three taxa that we reported before to be significantly different when compared between stunted and normal nutritional children, only Faecalibacterium showed significance with nutritional intake, particularly positive correlations with percent carbohydrate- ( q = 0.036; rho = +0.19) and percent fibre-intake ( q = 0.038; rho = +0.20). The results add to the insight of the role of the gut microbiota in stunting and possibilities to prevent this by modulating the microbiota. The trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov with identifier number NCT05119218.