The experiment found out that kids who go to bed at early ages have healthier gut bacteria compared to those who go to bed late.
Some species improving gut health, such as Akkermansia muciniphila, were found at a higher level in the early sleepers subgroup. These bacteria are known to support gut health and also healthy functionality of the brain.
Past research have highlighted that sufficient sleep leads to better grades, physical development and better BMI indices.
The genomic analysis detected that increase in amount in certain beneficial gut bacteria in children that went to bed early. More research is, however, needed to link the subjects’ schedules to the bacterial composition, but among the targeted microbes, Akkermansia muciniphila was notably more abundant in the early bedtime group.
Other significantly higher bacteria among early sleepers involves Holdemania filiformis, Firmicutes bacterium CAG-95, Streptococcus sp. A12, Weissella confusa, Clostridium sp. CAG-253, Alistipes finegoldii and Eubacterium siraeum.
Furthermore, the content of CAG-83 fungi was higher in the early bedtime group.
At the phylum and genus levels the bacterial abundance from early sleep was higher in Verrucomicrobia, Akkermansia muciniphila, Holdemania massiliensis, and unclassified Firmicutes.
This showed that Akkermansia muciniphila and Alistipes finegoldii were directly proportional to the latency of sleep among the subjects. The instances of Clostridium sp. CAG-253 were inversely related to sleep onset latency.
Alistipes finegoldii was positively associated with the overall sleep time and thus negatively associated with dream density as well as the efficiency. There were inverse relationships between Alistipes finegoldii, Akkermansia muciniphila and Holdemania filiformis and sleep quality.
On the metabolic side we were able to find out that early sleepers had higher activity of the metabolism related to amino acids and neurotransmitters. These pathways are important for the human brain, their existence is associated with the idea that there may be a link between the State of a human gut and their cognition levels.
Correlation without causation
The finding could be a sleep pattern compared to the microbial related results or the other way round, where the microbial profiles determine sleep pattern.
However, this study concentrated on the first scenario only and the sleep timings of children were their days’ natural, unwrought sleep timings, without any manipulation of the researchers.
The study presented above shows high potential for these correlations to be elaborated in many different ways to investigate causal pathways of a sleep-gut-cognitive link.
Reference:
Jackson J. Study links children’s bedtimes to gut health, finds early sleepers have greater microbial diversity in gut flora
