A study has revealed that babies in the womb might get their first gut bacteria from mother's mouth as they travel from the bloodstream to the placenta.
Kjersti Aagaard of Texas Children's Hospital in Houston said that from the broad range of bacteria found most of them are similar to the bacterial community found in humans' mouths which states that these bacteria are somehow coming through the bloodstream to the placenta, New Scientist reported.
Up till now, it was believed that babies are born with a sterile gut and they pick up microbes when they journey through their mother's vagina, which migrate to colonize the gut but this belief was challenged when bacteria were found in the meconium.
He further suggested that these bacteria could soon find their way into the baby's blood vessels within the placenta or by passing into amniotic fluid, which is swallowed by the baby.
The research on disturbances in the placenta's bacterial community might help determine why some women give birth prematurely and could also be one of the ways that a woman's diet affects her offspring's gut bacteria.
