Top Highlights

• Dysbiosis, or microbial imbalance, is observed in people with a variety of health problems such as Crohn’s disease, metabolic syndrome, colon cancer, and even autism.
• A child that passes through the birth canal is first introduced to bacteria from the mother’s vaginal microbiota and from her anus. The mother’s vagina often contains a large proportion of the bacteria Lactobacillus, an oxygen-tolerant group of microbes that are commonly found in the gut microbiota of vaginally delivered babies. After passing throu...
• Being keenly aware of the differences that exist between the microbiota of C-section and vaginally delivered children, Rob and his wife took matters into their own hands. Using vaginal swabs from the mother, they inoculated their daughter at multiple body sites to ensure that she was exposed to the bacteria she would have encountered had she gone t...
• While our daughter was born at full term, knowledge of how important early gut colonizers can be planted a seed in our heads that providing probiotic bacteria might help to mitigate the less than ideal start to microbiota assembly that resulted from her C-section birth and subsequent antibiotic treatment. For the first two weeks after we brought he...
• As in the study of preterm infants supplemented with beneficial bacteria, it is possible that filling space within the gut with benign bacteria excludes pathogenic bacteria and minimizes the risk of necrotizing enterocolitis. Giving the most beneficial bacteria first crack at the resources available within the gut could be an effective way to block...