Figure 5.
Infant feeding and L. reuteri colonisation in the L. reuteri-supplemented group. L. reuteri prevalence (a) and abundance (b) in faeces of L. reuteri-supplemented extremely preterm ELBW infants by feeding type. Prevalence is expressed as the percentage of infants with a L. reuteri-positive faecal sample and the total number of infants in each feeding category. Abundance is shown as the number of L. reuteri bacteria per 1 g wet faeces. Boxplots show median with 25% and 75% percentiles and 1.5× the interquartile range. For graphical display, the number of L. reuteri bacteria per 1 g wet faeces in (b) was set to 100 for infants with L. reuteri-negative faeces. Infants in the partially breast milk-fed (‘mixed’) feeding group received 1–50% breast milk. Statistics: Fisher’s exact test (a), Kruskal–Wallis test (b). ELBW = extremely low birth weight, PMW = postmenstrual week.