Abstract
This study investigated the effects of different delivery modes on oral microflora in healthy newborns immediately post-partum, and provided evidence for microbial colonization disruption induced by medical procedures. Eighteen infants delivered by cesarean section and 74 by vaginal delivery were included in the study. High-throughput sequencing of 16S bacterial rRNA was performed on oral samples collected immediately after birth. All data were analyzed using bioinformatics approaches. Our results indicated that different oral bacteria were found between infants delivered by cesarean section compared to vaginal delivery group. Lactobacillus, Prevotella and Gardnerella were the most abundant genera in the vaginal group, while Petrimonas, Bacteroides, Desulfovibrio, Pseudomonas, Staphylococcus, Tepidmicrobium, VadinCA02, and Bifidobacterium were dominant bacteria in the cesarean section (C-section) group. Furthermore, bacteria isolated from 27 vaginally-delivered infants were not clustered into the vaginal group. Most of them spent more than 24 hours in the delivery room and this led to repeated sterilization procedures. We hypothesized that repeated sterilization might have influenced oral microflora in those cases. To conclude, this study suggested that different modes of birth delivery affect oral microflora in healthy infants. In addition, attention shall be paid to the clinical practice of repeated sterilization of the vulva that possibly obstructs the colonization of vaginal bacterial.
Highlights
The gut bacterial colonization and evolution begins at birth, and plays an important role in infants’ growth development, nutrition, metabolism and immunization[1,2,3,4]
2 C-section and 6 vaginal delivery babies did not meet the inclusion criteria. 92 participants were included in the final study and were divided into two groups: vaginal delivery group and C-section group
Several studies have found that infants born by C-section have a higher risk of developing allergic rhinitis, asthma, eczema, obesity and diabetes when comparing with infants born vaginally[12,13]
Summary
The gut bacterial colonization and evolution begins at birth, and plays an important role in infants’ growth development, nutrition, metabolism and immunization[1,2,3,4]. Compared with the infants delivered by vaginal delivery, those by cesarean section (C-section) have less diverse intestinal microbiome and are more likely to develop diseases such as asthma, obesity and diabetes[7]. It has been reported that some vaginally delivered infants lack Bifidobacteria in their guts[8], suggesting that other factors may interfere the intestinal microbiota. A previous study of three-month-old infants reported higher amount of bacterial taxa of the oral microbiota in vaginally delivered infants than the ones with other birth modes[9]. We collected the samples immediately after birth, and we compared the differences in colonization patterns of the oral microbiota between the infants born via different delivery modes to study the possible factors that may affect the infants oral microflora
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