Awards

Mary Glover-Amengor of the Food Research Institute in Ghana will investigate whether drinking soymilk-burkina, a Ghanaian indigenous fermented milk and millet beverage (smoothie), improves the nutritional status and gut health of women of reproductive age living in the Volta and Oti regions of Ghana. They will produce the soymilk-burkina and test it for bacterial and fungal content and consumer acceptability. They will also recruit 30 pregnant and non-pregnant women and perform a randomized controlled trial to test the effect of daily consumption of 330ml soymilk-burkina over six months. Monthly blood and fecal samples will be collected during trial, and two months after, to analyze nutritional status, inflammation biomarkers and parasites. The gut microbiome will also be analyzed using culture-based assays and next generation sequencing.

Laeticia Celine Toe of Institut de Recherches en Sciences de la Santé in Burkina Faso will evaluate the nutritional content of traditionally-fermented millet porridge and its effects on gut health and inflammation in women of reproductive age in rural Burkina Faso. Maternal undernutrition affects child survival and is a major problem in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. This could be addressed by enhancing the nutritional content of common foods, which can be done by fermentation. They will provide a selection of households with locally-produced millet grain for fermenting, and collect samples every five days to evaluate the nutritional and microbial contents. They will also recruit a cohort of 30 women, including 15 pregnant women, to assess the effects of daily fermented millet porridge consumption on fecal microbiota composition, fatty acid levels, and inflammatory markers.

Manoja Kumar Das of the INCLEN Trust International in India will determine the optimal dose of traditional fermented rice-water (pakhala/torani) to improve the nutritional status and the gut and vaginal microbiomes in women of reproductive age in Odisha, India, to promote maternal health. They will provide different rice types and fermentation protocols for households to prepare torani and also prepare it in the laboratory and evaluate its stability and nutritional and microbial content. A prospective cohort study will be performed to determine the minimum daily dose needed to improve the diversity of the gut microbiota in eight to ten adult females. This will then be used in a pilot test with 200 adult reproductive-age women to evaluate the effects of a daily dose over six months on gut and vaginal microbiome diversity, nutritional profiles, and inflammatory markers.

Syed Asad Ali and colleagues of Aga Khan University in Pakistan will perform a clinical trial to test whether traditional fermented pickles (achars) reduce gut inflammation and promote healthy bacterial growth in women of reproductive age from the poor rural Matiari district in Pakistan, to help reduce rates of childhood stunting. Key drivers of childhood stunting are poor maternal health and nutrition, which could be improved by regular ingestion of fermented foods, although this has never been tested in a real-life setting. They will recruit 210 women of reproductive age and provide different types of locally-produced achar for consumption at home one-to-two times per day over a period of eight weeks. They will collect blood and fecal samples at four, eight, and 12 weeks, and test them for nutritional and inflammatory markers, and perform metagenomic analyses of a subgroup of samples to evaluate the composition of their microbiomes.

Heather Jaspan of the University of Cape Town in South Africa will conduct a randomized controlled trial of post-partum South African mothers to determine whether unpasteurized mageu is more nutritious and promotes a healthier gut microbiome than pasteurized mageu, which is more commonly consumed. Mageu is a common grain-based fermented porridge used as a weaning food in infants and as an energy drink in adults. It is generally produced in pasteurized form, which may inactive the live bacteria that can boost health. They will locally manufacture a live-culture grain-based fermented mageu and use it to conduct a pilot trial with 30 women. The women will receive either store-bought mageu or live-culture mageu for daily consumption over six weeks. They will collect fecal samples to measure microbial diversity, which is a marker of gut health, and host and inflammatory biomarkers between women consuming pasteurized versus unpasteurized mageu.