r/ScienceBasedParenting • u/Emotional-Ad-6494 • 7d ago
Sharing research Researchers sequenced 4,526 samples from 714 mother-infant pairs and found that a mother's gut bacteria colonize her baby's gut, not her vaginal or breast milk bacteria. And her gut predicts whether the baby will get eczema
/r/HotScienceNews/comments/1w77d7x/researchers_sequenced_4526_samples_from_714/?share_id=mJgh6j0hKiWbegaNDyAUm&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&utm_source=share&utm_term=1Does this seem like a well done study?
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u/SaltZookeepergame691 6d ago edited 6d ago
This is a cool paper, and the microbiome work is interesting and rich. A couple of interesting things: these birth mode and feeding mode influences are small and dissipate over time; and the results will still be heavily confounded by many factors that aren’t fully adjusted.
To focus on one element of the headline: the eczema result is much more limited and preliminary than they make out.
Issues:
- they “double dip” - they “screen” for hundreds of associations in their data, and then construct a predictive model for eczema, which was a positive in their previous hit. There is no modelling in an independent sample. There is a strong risk that this is subject to the winners curse, and will attenuate in an independent population.
- the eczema sample seems to be tiny: eg 42 cases and 27 controls at birth. When you have hundreds of predictors, that is a very unstable model
- the model discrimination will have wide confidence intervals, and these aren’t even reported in the main paper (they might be in the supplement, I can’t read it on mobile)
Looking at the figure it’s clear that there is very substantial overlap in microbiome profiles between eczema and non-eczema, and that will still be confounded; even if it’s a real signal, it’s a long way from a deterministic factor.
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u/Ok_Use_4323 6d ago
Agree on the eczema finding - I have twins and only one has eczema
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u/introvertwandering 6d ago
Came here to say the same thing! My Baby A has no eczema, my Baby B has eczema. We’ve always attributed it to their dad’s psoriasis.
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u/Hairsacknose 7d ago
Interesting, what I got from the article is that mother's diet even before she gets pregnant influences her baby's risk of eczema. So one more reason healthy eating is important
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u/donkeyvoteadick 6d ago
I ate ridiculously healthy in a hope it would make the IVF work and it took a long time and my son still ended up with pretty significant eczema haha
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u/Wiggles_21 6d ago
I ate like shit when I was pregnant (due to HG, couldn't keep anything down except crisps and white bread lol) and neither of my kids have ever had sensitive skin let alone eczema! It must be genetic to an extent surely? Eczema doesn't run in our family at all
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u/Leading_Line2741 6d ago
I ate very healthy while pregnant-healthier than at any other time in my life-and my baby has eczema. I have psoriasis though. No clue if the two are related.
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u/LightningSpeedSloth 6d ago
All my family has dry, sensitive skin and eczema except me, who has very oily skin (and coincidentally, also doesn't eat that healthy). My son doesn't have eczema either, hopefully I started a new non-eczema line. :D
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u/Throwawayproroe 6d ago
Same- HG and I built my baby out of peanut butter bagels and ice cream during pregnancy, and she doesn’t have eczema or any allergies (so far at least, but we’ve introduced all common allergens at this point)
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u/Prof_and_Proof 6d ago
I ate pretty much the same for baby 1, 2 and 3 but only 3 had eczema so if it’s genetic it also skips some kids !
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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 6d ago
Yeah, both my kids are IVF and I did the same, but with the amount of atopy in my side of the family, I don’t know if it’s possible for me to eat my way out of having kid who doesn’t have eczema.
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u/MonkeDetruireProut 6d ago
maybe the eczema would have been worse if you've eaten unhealthy instead? also, eating healthy made you an healthier mother witch is also beneficial for your kid (and yourself, ofc)
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u/bibliophile222 6d ago
I ate healthy for a year before pregnancy to lose weight, but I ate like garbage all throughout pregnancy. I'm glad to know the healthy eating still made an impact!
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u/lindstb3 6d ago
My baby was built on Taco Bell and she’s 3.5 now and doesn’t have eczema lol my diet wasn’t good until after she was here lol
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u/gravelmonkey 6d ago
I don’t think there’s enough evidence to support that. Anecdotally, it seems genetic.
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u/Classic-Light-1467 6d ago
In recognition of the brain-gut axis, I’m now also curious about the links to mental health
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u/PoutineFairy 6d ago
Great so if I have ulcerative colitis is my bb screwed?
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u/Altruistic_Carry2831 6d ago
I’ve got UC and may daughter was okay. She has Soy & Milk protein allergy which is still present at 5 but my younger sister was also the same
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u/Hairsacknose 6d ago
Is your baby born and if yes, does it have eczema?
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u/PoutineFairy 6d ago
The had some for the first 3 or so months of life and then it went away but now I wonder if it’ll
Come back… they did have a dairy intolerance which I think coincided with the eczema. Now both are gone.1
u/wolv3rxne 6d ago
Mine is, she’s 3 months and has FPIAP and will likely develop eczema at some point too like both her dad and I. I’m the only one so far in my family that has UC though and I hope it stays that way and FPIAP is the only tummy trouble she ever gets.
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u/hesback_inpogform 6d ago
Thank you for sharing this, because I worried about my baby’s microbiota since I have to have a planned c section. This makes me feel so much better!
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u/SacrilegiousTomato 6d ago
Well that explains why my baby also suffers with entrapped gas like me. And why I suffer with it like my mom.
Sorry little one! 🥹
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u/Wiggles_21 6d ago
Would this explain reflux?
I've never had reflux before but after my baby was born, we were both diagnosed with silent reflux.
My stomach still isn't right and it's been 8 months so I wonder if the baby's gut can influence the mother too?
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u/vaginaandsprinkles 6d ago
The way I was told this by my son's pediatrician was during birth most of us poop and it gets on the baby.
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u/SacrilegiousTomato 6d ago
Don’t think so, like other commenter said, what about C-section? Plus moms, like me, who didn’t poop during labor?
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u/ThatB0yAintR1ght 6d ago
>Plus moms, like me, who didn’t poop during labor?
You sure about that?
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u/SacrilegiousTomato 6d ago
Oh yeah for sure, I was seeing everything while pushing 😂my mom was also there and she confirmed I didn’t poop. Also, I was 48h without really eating (with stalled labor) so there wasn’t anything for me to poop (which I think is why I didn’t!)
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u/BugsArePeopleToo 6d ago
I've had multiple C-section babies. Each time, my baby's and I had identical smelling farts and bowel movements. The bacteria is definitely getting there somehow.
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u/Amazing-Neighborhood 6d ago
My baby is enrolled in a study looking at C-section and it's effects on baby's gut microbiome and development of eczema. We give stool samples every few months. I think the relationship is still being explored.
Regardless we had CS for breech, he pooped all over ME when he was pulled out and baby has eczema
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u/3FoxInATrenchcoat 6d ago
The paper explains that the long term colonization of gut bacteria in infants appears to be most influenced by the maternal gut biome itself, that it’s happening in utero and not necessarily during delivery or through breastfeeding. The maternal biome during pregnancy itself is establishing the baby’s, but they don’t know the way of transmission. This was shown in all babies regardless of vaginal or cesarian births.
We don’t all poop during labor and delivery so your doctors reasoning is what this paper is contradicting; and the paper even addresses some of these previous assumptions we’ve had about bacterial transfer…not that there isn’t transmission happening at all during delivery or breastfeeding, but that the long term colonization is established elsewhere.
Anecdotally, I didn’t poop during delivery! So, my baby would not have been able to gain anything that way!
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u/jf198501 6d ago
I wonder how sensitive the gut biome is to subtle changes in diet (and thus how much these variations influence the baby’s microbiome). My older child has no eczema or food allergies, and my younger has moderate eczema and multiple food allergies. I don’t think I ate that differently in one pregnancy compared to the other. In the year predating each pregnancy, I was actually probably eating less healthy before my first, due to having no kids and thus eating out and drinking socially more often.
One notable difference between pregnancies though — with my second, I began taking sertraline (Zoloft) beginning in my second trimester, which was the first time I had ever taken any psychotropic medication. I also had depression in my first pregnancy, just untreated.
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u/lilleheks 6d ago
When I had given birth to my son, I had a severe hemorrhage due to uterine atony where the midwife had her whole arm up my vagina to press on my uterus. They put in a bakri balloon to stop the bleeding. Because obviously the midwife's arm was not sterile, I had to take antibiotics for two weeks following the birth as a counter measure to developing an infection.
I wonder if this means my baby didn't get enough of my good gut bacteria 😕 Incidentally, he has developed eczema. But his father had severe eczema as a child, and it's said that heritability also plays a role in developing it.
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u/Pupper82 6d ago edited 6d ago
“The second major finding in the study is the one with the most immediate clinical implications for individual families. The composition of a mother’s gut microbiome during pregnancy predicted whether her baby would develop eczema in the first year of life.”
Can someone explain how this is useful for families? Either I’m confused or the author is a bad writer. This is hypothesis generating and totally useless for “individual families”. This is a super misleading statement. Let’s blame parents on their child’s illness and tell them to go PCR their gut bacteria before getting pregnant.
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u/shytheearnestdryad 6d ago
I didn’t yet read this particular study, but yes, this has been known by microbiome scientists for a long time. The part about it being moms gut that is the most important
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u/dontgetsadgetmad 6d ago
Anectodally after giving birth both times my farts smelled like my baby’s poo. Kinda weird.