WIKIMEDIA, ERNEST FSwabbing babies born by Cesarean section with the vaginal fluid of their mothers helped enhance the infants’ microbiota in a small pilot study published in Nature Medicine this week (February 1).
“Through the analysis of these data, we found that the microbiota of C-section babies that were exposed to maternal vaginal fluids was more similar to that of vaginally born infants than to [that of] unexposed C-section infants,” study coauthor Jose Clemente from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City told reporters during a press briefing.
Anita Kozyrskyj of the University of Alberta, Canada, who was not involved in the study told The Scientist that the microbial profiles of the swabbed babies may have been influenced by other factors. “That’s the issue with having a report on such a small [sample size],” she said.
WIKIMEDIA, RAMAThe developmental timing of deleting the circadian clock regulator Bmal1 from mice genomes impacts the animals’ aging-related phenotypes, according to a study published in Science Translational Medicine this week (February 4). The findings show that “certain early developmental stages are likely more sensitive to circadian clock disruptions compared to adulthood,” said Ghislain Breton from the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston who was not involved in the work.
