Researchers report link with gut health in babies

Researchers report link with gut health in babies
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Researchers say gut health may be linked to eczema in babies. Maskot/Getty Images
  • About 6% of children globally have eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis.
  • While some children may outgrow eczema, many do not and experience worsened conditions.
  • Researchers say they found evidence suggesting a link between the gut microbiome and eczema during infancy, which could provide prevention and treatment options.

About 6% of children worldwide have eczema — a chronic inflammatory skin disorder that can cause itchy, cracked, and dry skin.

Clinically known as atopic dermatitis, this skin condition currently has no cure.

Although some infants and children outgrow their eczema, many do not, and the condition may worsen as they age.

Now, researchers from The Chinese University of Hong Kong say they have found evidence suggesting a link between the gut microbiome and eczema during infancy, a discovery that could provide potential prevention and treatment options.

The study was recently published in mSystems, a journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

For this study, researchers recruited pregnant females who were close to delivery to participate in the study. Information was taken on their health and lifestyle during and after pregnancy.

Researchers collected diet, medication, and health information on 112 infants after they were born.

Scientists also kept abreast of any eczema issues and followed the development of each baby’s gut microbiome by collecting nine stool samples over the child’s first three years of life.

“The problem of eczema is increasing, and our study shows it could be a result of unwanted changes in the gut bacterial content,” Dr. Paul Chan, a professor of microbiology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and principal investigator of the study, explained to Medical News Today.

“The first year of life could be a critical period to restore the gut bacteria to a more desirable composition.”

Previous research shows the health of an infant’s gut microbiome plays an important role in infant development and sets the tone for a person’s overall health as they age.

Upon analysis, researchers reported differences in the composition and diversity of gut microbiota across the first three years of the infants’ lives.

They said they discovered that how a baby is delivered, what antibiotics they are given during labor, and how they are fed influence how the gut microbiome is established over the first 12 months of life.

Additionally, scientists also found certain changes in an infant’s gut microbiome occurred right before they were diagnosed with eczema.

This included a lack of a species of bacteria called Bacteroides and too much of another type of bacteria called Clostridium sensu stricto 1.

Researchers also reported these same patterns were observed in babies delivered via C-section, suggesting the gut microbiome may play a role in previously reported associations between C-section delivery and increased risk of eczema.

After reviewing the research, Dr. Peter Lio, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology and pediatrics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago,

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Pandemic poses short- and long-term risks to babies, especially boys

Pandemic poses short- and long-term risks to babies, especially boys

The pandemic has created a hostile environment for pregnant people and their babies.

Stress levels among expectant mothers have soared. Pregnant women with Covid are five times as likely as uninfected pregnant people to require intensive care and 22 times as likely to die. Infected moms are four times as likely to have a stillborn child.

Yet some of the pandemic’s greatest threats to infants’ health may not be apparent for years or even decades.

Full coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

That’s because babies of Covid-infected moms are 60 percent more likely to be born very prematurely, which increases the danger of infant mortality and long-term disabilities such as cerebral palsy, asthma and hearing loss, as well as a child’s risk of adult disease, including depression, anxiety, heart disease and kidney disease.

Studies have linked fever and infection during pregnancy to developmental and psychiatric conditions such as autism, depression and schizophrenia.

“Some of these conditions do not show up until middle childhood or early adult life, but they have their origins in fetal life,” said Dr. Evdokia Anagnostou, a neurologist and pediatrics professor at the University of Toronto.

For fetuses exposed to Covid, the greatest danger is usually not the coronavirus itself, but the mother’s immune system.

Both severe Covid infections and the strain of the pandemic can expose fetuses to harmful inflammation, which can occur when a mother’s immune system is fighting a virus or when stress hormones send nonstop alarm signals.

Prenatal inflammation “changes the way the brain develops and, depending on the timing of the infection, it can change the way the heart or kidneys develop,” Anagnostou said.

Although health officials have strongly recommended Covid vaccines for pregnant people, only 35 percent are fully vaccinated.

At least 150,000 pregnant people have been diagnosed with Covid; more than 25,000 of them have been hospitalized, and 249 have died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although most babies will be fine, even a small increase in the percentage of children with special medical or educational needs could have a large effect on the population, given the huge number of Covid infections, Anagnostou said.

“If someone has a baby who is doing well, that is what they should focus on,” Anagnostou said. “But from a public health point of view, we need to follow women who experienced severe Covid and their babies to understand the impact.”

Learning from history

Researchers in the United States and other countries are already studying “the Covid generation” to see whether these children have more health issues than those conceived or born before 2020.

Previous crises have shown that the challenges fetuses face in the womb — such as maternal infections, hunger, stress and hormone-disrupting chemicals — can leave a lasting imprint on their health, as well as that of their children and grandchildren, said Dr. Frederick Kaskel, director of pediatric nephrology at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore.

People whose

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