Yan et al. 2025 — Association between infants’ serum levels of 26 metals and gut microbiota: a hospital-based cross-sectional study in China
This Frontiers in Microbiology original-research paper from Central South University and the Hunan Children’s Hospital reports a hospital-based cross-sectional study correlating infant serum concentrations of 26 metals with gut-microbiome 16S rRNA profiles in a Chinese pediatric cohort. The 26-metal panel covers the HMTc analyte set (Pb, Cd, As, Hg, Ni, Al, Cr, Sn, U) plus essential and additional trace elements, and the gut-microbiome characterization covers community-level diversity and taxon-level abundance. The cross-sectional design identifies metal-microbiome associations rather than causal mechanisms, but the breadth of the metal panel is unusual in the early-life-microbiome literature and provides a multi-metal-multi-taxon association map that complements the single-metal mechanistic studies (Yang 2023 for Ni, Soto-Ocaña 2024 for Zn / Mn).
Key contribution
This is the broadest-metal-panel infant-microbiome study in the loaded corpus. The HMTc-analyte coverage is comprehensive at the serum level, allowing the wiki to document associations between dietary heavy metal exposure (which translates to infant serum levels) and gut microbiome composition for each HMTc-relevant metal individually. Detailed per-metal-per-taxon associations are reported in the published tables; full extraction belongs in the structured-evidence layer rather than this source page summary.
Methods (brief)
Hospital-based cross-sectional design enrolling infants at the Hunan Children’s Hospital. Serum metal quantification by ICP-MS for the 26-element panel. Gut microbiota characterized by 16S rRNA sequencing of fecal samples. Statistical analysis used standard cohort association methods to identify per-metal-per-taxon correlations.
Limitations
Cross-sectional design cannot establish temporal or causal relationships. Single-jurisdiction (China) cohort. Hospital-based recruitment introduces potential selection effects. Serum metal levels are an indirect proxy for dietary metal exposure; the paper does not directly link dietary intake to microbiome outcomes.
Implications
- Certification: Direct empirical evidence that infant heavy-metal body burden correlates with gut microbiome composition. Useful as supporting context for HMTc certification-floor arguments, particularly for the IandC product rows where dietary metal load is the primary infant exposure pathway.
- Microbiome: Highest-quality multi-metal infant-cohort microbiome reference in the loaded corpus. Crosswalks to WikiBiome for infant-microbiome-metals associations. Companion to Soto-Ocaña 2024 (mechanistic) and Yang 2023 (single-metal-mechanistic).
- Courses: Useful for teaching the dietary-to-serum-to-microbiome causal-pathway investigation strategy.