Researchers Attempt To Restore Mother's Microbe To Promote Health For C-Section Babies

According to the experts, mother's vaginal fluids are very beneficial for babies. It contains bacteria that is essential for the babies to fight different diseases. However, babies can only get these helpful bacteria if they will be delivered normally. Nevertheless, some women still have no choice but to give birth via cesarean section -- making their babies missed out all the healthy microbes.

Thus, experts are finding other possible ways to restore microbes, so babies who will born via C-section can still get the all the beneficial bacteria they need. And recently, one research suggested that it is possible.

The findings which were published in the "Nature Medicine" suggested that the mother's microbes can be transferred manually, from the vagina to a baby after delivering through C-section. "These results show that we can partially restore and normalize the microbial assembly that takes place naturally in babies," Maria Dominguez-Bello, an associate professor of medicine at the New York University School of Medicine and led author of the study said, as per Philly.com.

The expert also stressed that they still need to test the approach to a larger group of babies to know if it is really effective. More so, they still have to follow up the health of the babies involved in the test to see if there is any difference to their health.

Dominguez-Bello also said that the babies born through cesarean have a higher risk of diseases because they don't pass through the birth canal and don't get all the microbes they need. And some of the illness these babies suffer are allergies, asthma, Type 1 diabetes obesity and Celiac disease.

Talking about the procedure, Dominguez-Bello said they put a piece of gauze inside the birth canal of pregnant women who are going through C-section before delivery -- allowing the pad to absorb all the mother's microbes.

After the delivery, doctors swab the babies with the prepared gauze from mouth, face and all over their body. Then they compared the babies who were slathered with microbes to babies delivered normally. And said they found some good results with those babies, compared to those who were not slathered.

Dominguez-Bello, however, admitted that they still need to monitor the health of the babies for about three to five years before they can conclude that the approach can really decrease the risk of some diseases.