Childbirth|Babies born by caesarean section do not get the good bacteria from their mothers, which babies born by birth are exposed to. This can affect immunity.
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A Finnish study investigates the effect of mother’s feces on the microbiome of babies born by caesarean section.
For the first feeding, the babies received breast milk to which 3.5 milligrams of the mother’s feces had been added.
31 babies participated in the study, 15 of whom received milk fortified with feces. There were 16 babies in the control group.
Differences in the microbiota were observed from the second day of life and persisted until six months of age.
With little rice A “poop shake” mixed with a lot of mother’s excrement is good for the microbiome of a baby born by caesarean section. In a recent Finnish study, newborns who had a caesarean section received breast milk with a small amount of mother’s excrement added to it during the first feeding.
The composition of the intestinal microbiota of babies born by C-section is much narrower than that of babies born by vaginal delivery. However, C-section babies get good bacteria and their gut microbiota is diversified when they are fed milk fortified with their mothers’ excrement under carefully controlled conditions.
“The way of birth has a huge impact on what kind of differences arise in the intestinal microbiome. The method of delivery is the most significant or at least one of the most significant factors, and nutritional or other factors do not even come close to it,” says the pediatric infectious diseases specialist, professor, who leads the stool transplant research Otto Helve.
“And what kind of gut microbiota we have after birth seems to be important for what kind of defense system we get. The first months after birth are when our body’s defense system develops.”
Several studies have shown that caesarean section is associated to many short- and long-term consequences. Babies born by caesarean section seem to have, for example higher probability for asthma, laryngitis, gastrointestinal tract infections and other diseases related to the immune system.
Although the differences are very small for individual children, they have been identified in extensive studies.
Children born by caesarean section are also more susceptible to common pathogens in hospital environments, such as enterococci and Klebsiella bacteria, according to Nature in 2019 published research.
About babies born in Finland in 2022 almost a fifth was born by caesarean section.
Babies are exposed during vaginal delivery to microbes from the mother’s vagina and to some extent also to the mother’s excrement. In a caesarean section, the environment is very sterile and there is no such exposure. This affects the development of the child’s microbiota.
However, the differences between the intestinal microbiota of caesarean section and vaginally born ones usually level out during the first six months of life and disappear by the age of one year at the latest.
The Finnish group reports already in 2020 in the Cell magazine in a pilot studythat milk with mother’s feces produced beneficial microbes in the intestines of newborns.
Helve, who works as the director of the population department of the Institute of Health and Welfare (THL). introduced his group’s new preliminary results the other week in California, and they were reported by Nature.
By caesarean section born babies received breast milk with 3.5 milligrams of mother’s excrement added for the first feeding.
There were 15 newborns who received a stool transplant. In addition, there was a control group of 16 babies born by caesarean section who did not receive their mothers’ stool. The babies and their mothers were randomly divided into groups, and the mothers did not know which group they belonged to.
All babies had a similar microbiome immediately after birth. Differences appeared right from the second day of life, and they were visible until six months of age. Children born between 2019 and 2023 will be followed until they are two years old.
At the beginning, 90 mothers participated in the project.
“Approximately half had to be left out of the study because either some pathogens were found in the screening or the screening was not carried out in time. After all, we can have pathogens in our excrement that are passed on,” says Helve.
“For this reason, we have said very strongly that this should not be done at home.”
General According to Helve, the practice of milk fortified with feces in caesarean sections is not coming. The ongoing Finnish research is rather an intermediate stage, and plenty of additional research is needed. If beneficial strains of microbes can be identified, they may sometimes be transferred in other ways to C-section babies.
“I am absolutely convinced that this is one way forward.”
For newborns, in previous studies, it has also been tried that babies born by caesarean section have been given the mother’s vaginal discharge, for example, directly into the mouth. However, according to Helve, this method does not modify the microbiome as effectively as a fecal transplant, for example, due to the different composition of vaginal secretions.