“Microbes defy a simple notion of individuality. They are essential to our biology, and they travel with us from birth to death. Yet they also flow between us, and can be found in water, food and soil.”
—Carl Zimmer, The New York TimesThis is what happens when scientists have kids,
Most of the microbes that make up a baby’s gut community are acquired during birth — a microbially rich and messy process that exposes the baby to a whole suite of maternal microbes. Babies born by Caesarean, however, a comparatively sterile procedure, do not acquire their mother’s vaginal and intestinal microbes at birth. Their initial gut communities more closely resemble that of their mother’s (and father’s) skin, which is less than ideal and may account for higher rates of allergy, asthma and autoimmune problems in C-section babies: not having been seeded with the optimal assortment of microbes at birth, their immune systems may fail to develop properly.
At dinner, Knight told me that he was sufficiently concerned about such an eventuality that, when his daughter was born by emergency C-section, he and his wife took matters into their own hands: using a sterile cotton swab, they inoculated the newborn infant’s skin with the mother’s vaginal secretions to insure a proper colonization.
From “Some of My Best Friends Are Germs” by Michael Pollan [NY Times]
LINK: Viruses exploit good gut bacteria to infect body
cbc.caFrom Popular Press:
”’…the studies uncover an unexpected aspect of microbiome contribution to viral infection cycles, Ruslan Medzhitov, an immunologist at Yale University in Connecticut, said in a release accompanying the journal articles. ‘The work adds to a growing appreciation of the importance of the microbiome.’”
