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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Oct 13.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Med. 2016 Feb 1;22(3):250–253. doi: 10.1038/nm.4039

Figure 1. Restoring the maternal microbiota in infants born by C-section.

Figure 1

(a) Infants born by C-section were swabbed with a gauze that was incubated in the maternal vagina 30–60 min prior to the C-section. All mothers delivering by C-section received antibiotics (ABX) as part of standard of care. The gauze was extracted prior to the procedure, kept in a sterile container, and used to swab the newborn within the first one to three minutes after birth, starting with the mouth, face, and rest of the body. (b) Proportion of each sample estimated to originate from different maternal sources (using bacterial sourcetracking) of anal (top row), oral (middle), and skin (bottom) samples in infants delivered either vaginally (left column, n = 7 subjects sampled at six time points), by C-section (unexposed) (right, n = 8 × 6), or by C-section and exposed to vaginal fluids (middle, n = 4 × 6). (c) Bacterial community distances in anal (left), oral (middle), and skin (right) samples between vaginally delivered and C-section-delivered exposed (I-V) or not exposed (C-V) to the vaginal gauze, during the first month of life (Unweighted UniFrac distances). Bars indicate standard deviation from the mean. Distances between vaginal and exposed C-section infants were significantly smaller than from unexposed C-section infants (ANOVA and Tukey’s honest significant difference test. * P < 0.01) (d) Representative bacterial taxa enriched in infants with perinatal exposure to vaginal fluids during the first month of life. Bars indicate standard deviation from the mean.