Persistence of Suspected Probiotic Organisms in Preterm Infant Gut Microbiota Weeks After Probiotic Supplementation in the NICU.

ABSTRACT: Probiotics are becoming a prevalent supplement to prevent necrotizing enterocolitis in infants born preterm. However, little is known about the ability of these live bacterial supplements to colonize the gut or how they affect endogenous bacterial strains and the overall gut community. We capitalized on a natural experiment resulting from a policy change that introduced the use of probiotics to preterm infants in a single Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. We used amplicon sequence variants (ASVs) derived from the v3 region of the 16S rRNA gene to compare the prevalence and abundance of Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus in the gut of preterm infants who were and were not exposed to a probiotic supplement in-hospital. Infants were followed to 5 months corrected age. In the probioti

SUBMITTER: Yousuf EI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7552907 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature