Cesarean section recipients are usually given prophylactic antibiotics just before the procedure to prevent later infections at the surgical site. But there have been concerns about whether these antibiotics may have a negative impact on newborns and their microbiomes if the drugs travel through the umbilical cord and reach the baby before the cord is cut. Now, a study from the Netherlands has confirmed that although these antibiotics can cause subtle changes to the infant microbiome, they are much less significant than the impact of how the babies are fed.
The findings were August 14 in the journal . "We decided to conduct this study because it addresses a significant clinical question with possibly profound implications for infant health," says first and corresponding author Trishla Sinha of University Medical Center Groningen. "It is crucial to balance high-quality evidence of immediate benefits to the mother against equally robust evidence of any potential short- and long-term risks to the infant.
Mothers often ask whether the antibiotics they take influence their child, and this study can provide assurance that they have only small effects on infant gut microbiome." A handful of previous studies have looked at this question, but they had smaller sample sizes. The first part of the current study prospectively enrolled 28 mother-infant pairs.
Twelve of the mothers received antibiotics before skin incision, and the other 16 received them after the was clamped. For this grou.