Home births are increasingly rare, particularly because of the associated risks. However, this study points to a little-known advantage: babies born at home have more diverse bacteria and more beneficial bacteria. Far from encouraging home birth, this study from Rutgers University (New Jersey), presented in Scientific Reports, suggests that hospital care can sometimes affect the intestinal flora of newborns.
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According to the study, this bacterial richness, observed in the intestines and stools, will play a key and beneficial role in the immune development and metabolism of these babies. The suggested implication is subject to confirmation by further research, to seek to reorganize the hospital environment for safe births, so as to approximate home living conditions. Understanding why babies born at home have a more diverse microbiota for at least a month after birth, compared to those born in hospital, could indeed help prevent disease later in life.
The human microbiome is made up of trillions of bacteria, fungi and viruses that live in and on our bodies, many of which are beneficial to health and help prevent chronic conditions such as obesity, diabetes, asthma and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). In a nutshell, germs passed from mother to baby help prevent chronic disease.
The study followed 35 infants and their mothers one month after birth. 14 infants were born at home (including 4 in the water) and 21 in the hospital. The 35 deliveries took place vaginally without intervention and without maternal antibiotic treatment, all babies were exclusively breastfed. All infants were delivered by supportive midwives, and all had skin-to-skin contact and started breastfeeding shortly after birth. A related analysis of fecal samples from one-month-old hospital-born infants shows more pronounced inflammatory gene expression in a human epithelial cell model, vs. home-born infants. The epithelial cells covering the membranes, the skin and the orifices of certain organs.
Finally, the study suggests that a reorganization of the hospital environment for births without complications, towards home living conditions, could be beneficial to babies and their health later in life.
Uncertain causes: While the reasons for these differences between the gut microbiota of infants born at home and in hospitals are not known, researchers do indeed hypothesize that common hospital interventions such as infant bathing and antibiotic prophylaxis, or environmental factors – such as aseptic conditions in the hospital – could be involved.
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