Eureka! Institutional Repository

During the last years, the number of clinical trials and scientific data around the human microbiome and microbial communities across the human body has increased, along with the amount of knowledge regarding the different pathways that it is passed down. The human microbiome is an inseparable part of the human system since the very first stages of its life and it is passed from the mother’s organism to the offspring during the stages of gestation, labor and postpartum. From the proved, normal presence of microbes in the uterus during gestation, to the abnormal vaginal flora and the related pathological conditions, such as chorioamnionitis, it all starts from the mother’s body. With labor at the end of pregnancy, the baby passes through the birth canal where it gets covered with vaginal microbes and then comes in touch with the external world, its mother’s and health professional’s hands and bodies, acquiring a huge number and brand new species of microbes. The kind of labor greatly determines the biodiversity of the microbiome since it seems to be different among infants born with cesarean section versus vaginally born infants. Finally, one may say that the first days of life is a very critical period for the microbial establishment in the offspring’s organism, when the contribution of breastfeeding and frequent skin-to-skin human touch comes to play a major role at enriching and diversifying the infant’s Microbiome. Human milk oligosaccharides have a beneficial effect on this. A series of other factors, such as prenatal use of antimicrobial drugs to the mother and postnatal to the infant, formula milk feeding and prolonged period of infant hospitalization, all seem to negatively impact the microbe’s transmission and establishment. This paper studies the different pathways of passing the microbial community from mother to her offspring, as well as the factors precluding this procedure.