WIKIMEDIA, ERNEST FStudies of babies’ microbiomes have suggested that the way a baby is born—either vaginally or via caesarian section—impacts bacterial communities, perhaps with long-term consequences. But in a study published today (January 23) in Nature Medicine, researchers at Texas Children’s Hospital report that, after six weeks of age, they could not distinguish between the microbiomes of babies born one way or the other.
“It is incredibly important to answer this question accurately, not only because more than 1 million babies a year are born via cesarean section, but also because any future interventions aimed at correcting or mediating an altered microbiome of cesarean born babies needs to be targeted to the correct window of time,” said coauthor Kjersti Aagaard, in a press release. “We perform cesarean deliveries every day for really good reasons, and we need to be cautious that we do not assign risk to the wrong source, or misattribute risk to a surgery itself rather than the underlying reason that the surgery was undertaken.”
Indeed, some parents have taken to “seeding” their babies with the mothers’ vaginal microbes after a C-section, a practice some health care ...
