Caesarean babies have different gut bacteria, microbiome study finds

This has been known for quite a while, basically passing through the non sterile vaginal canal vs the sterile (or close to it) abdominal wall yields differences. This has lead to some questionable practices such as "vaginal seeding" whereby new moms will swab their vagina and then seed their babies shortly after birth (usually through placing the gauze in babies mouth or around their face). This comes up not infrequently at the hospital I work at. I think much of it stems from Facebook rather than actual discussions with their OB.

My younger brothers are identical twins, one born vaginally and the other 20 min later via C-section. I&#x27;ve always said they&#x27;d be good data for these type of studies.<p>Anecdotally, they don&#x27;t really have big differences regarding allergies or autoimmune disorders. Although growing up I always complained one stunk up the bathroom worse than the other.

This has been hypothesised for a while and is listed in many pregnancy books. There are also hypothesis linking the difference in gut flora to other long term outcomes (obesity, autism etc) in adults.<p>Reference:<p>J. Neu and J. Rushing, “Cesarean Versus Vaginal Delivery: Long-Term Infant Outcomes and the Hygiene Hypothesis,” Clinics in Perinatology 38, no. 2 (2011): 321–331.

My twin brother was born by caesarean. He gets asthma attacks from allergies that I don’t have. I’ve wondered for a while what effect a faecal transplant could have...

I was under the impression that this has been pretty well established for a while.

&gt; “In many cases, a caesarean is a life-saving procedure and can be the right choice for a woman and her baby,”<p>And in other cases it is a way to make life easier for medical staff?<p>Here in Panama, babies are disproportionately born through C-section in privately run hospitals.<p>Update: While I can&#x27;t cite any stats for Panama, there is an article [0] that says<p>&quot;The rates can be even higher in private clinics. For example, in Brazil, 80-90 percent of births in private clinics are now C-sections, compared with about 30-40 percent of births in public hospitals.&quot;<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;goatsandsoda&#x2F;2018&#x2F;10&#x2F;12&#x2F;656198429&#x2F;rate-of-c-sections-is-rising-at-an-alarming-rate" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;goatsandsoda&#x2F;2018&#x2F;10&#x2F;12&#x2F;6561984...</a>

I wonder, does this relationship hold at 1 month old? 1 year?<p>Any decent longitudinal studies of C-section babies from elective sections removing the health based ones?

Having a c-section might not be the underlying cause of the problem. Doctors carry out c-sections when a vaginal birth would create complications for the mother or the child. I.E. the mother or child was already &quot;sicker&quot; prior to the c-section.<p>I&#x27;d love to see a randomized control trial for this. To do it ethically, the trial could be designed like the CRASH trials. In those trials, doctors received patients with head injury and administered a placebo or corticosteroids. Since it was unclear whether corticosteroids helped or hurt, it was ethical for doctors to randomize patients. For births, only situations where it&#x27;s 50&#x2F;50 between a c-section and vaginal birth would qualify. Perhaps it&#x27;s too small a subset to be workable or perhaps it&#x27;s never 50&#x2F;50, but that type of trial would provide much stronger evidence for this intriguing idea.<p>On a personal note, I was a c-section baby and seem OK!

TL DR: C-section babies pick up more hospital bacteria than those born vaginally, research shows. The findings could explain the higher prevalence of asthma, allergies and other immune conditions in babies born by caesarean. By six to nine months, the differences between the two groups had levelled out. But scientists think that the initial exposure to bacteria at the moment of birth could be a “thermostat” moment for the immune system, defining its sensitivity and which strains of bacteria trigger a response.

The biggest question that surround all this microbiome discussion is - does the difference even matter?<p>Note that you can significantly alter your gut microbiome simply by changes to your diet.<p>Right now the link between the microbiome and allergies is tenuous at best.

I was depressed for half my life, I read on gut microbiome about 5 years ago(swapping the gut microbiome of mices changes their character) but didn&#x27;t put it together until I switched my diet to meat only. Any kind of sugar seems to trigger depression for me, that sadly means that I can&#x27;t eat plants. And current push for plant based diets worries me a lot. I was a C-Section baby.

Gut bacteria IIRC effect personality&#x2F;mood as well as other things.

the mother probably gets antibiotics before caesarean. Does that antibiotic make it into the baby? That would mean that beside not getting the good vaginal mix of bacteria (that mix among other benefits seems to be able to control candida yeast growth which is a big deal on its own), the bacteria set that the baby already possesses gets hit by the antibiotic, a double whammy of sort.

This is old news.

Many of us Caesarian babies didn&#x27;t get &quot;vaginal seeding&quot; at birth, but have been trying to catch up ever since.