Longitudinal monitoring of nutritional health in Kichwa mothers and breastfed infants through saliva sequencing applications

This project focuses on the Kichwa community specifically in Tena city and different urbanization areas around Napo Province of Ecuador. We seek to examine the roles of the dairy nutrition in Kichwa mothers and their influences on their child during breastfeeding. This will be done by investigating the availability of food, the social-cultural environments and the crosstalk with nutritional-health factors in the oral saliva epigenome/microbiome of the mothers and children during breastfeeding in Tena. This proposal is crucial because (i) It identifies the cultural meaning of food selection process for this rural population (ii) Identifies the nutritional, health and environmental factors in mothers and children. (iii) It determines the influence of mother’s diet in the children saliva epigenome/microbiome, (iv) it creates prevention programs and health-nutritional policy, (v) it promotes the use of traditional local foods and promotes new research in public health.