Baby thrivers

[...]some are wondering whether it might be possible to reshape the microbial community of the healthy infant gut to help prevent chronic diseases in adulthood. The abnormal gut microbiota of premature infants is thought to have a role in their vulnerability to necrotizing enterocolitis, a severe form of gut inflammation that strikes suddenly in the first few weeks of life and can cause permanent damage to the intestine. FORTIFIED MILK Breast milk might hold a solution. Since the 1990s, several studies have shown that breastfed babies are less vulnerable to necrotizing enterocolitis than are those fed with formula milk. Epidemiological studies suggest that caesarean delivery and formula feeding are associated with an increased risk of obesity and asthma, as well as other conditions, and many researchers think that these effects might be shaped by the gut microbiota. In a 2017 study (S. A. Frese et al. mSphere 2, e00501-17; 2017), researchers from the University of California, Davis, and biotechnology company Evolve BioSystems of Davis, California, reported that breastfed infants who were given strain EVC001 of Bifidobacterium longum infantis still had the microbes in their guts 30 days after treatment with the probiotic had been stopped.