PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Researchers have discovered the reason why babies born by cesarean section are at a higher risk to develop asthma.
Babies born by C-section don’t pass through the mother’s birth canal and never get coated by the trillions of beneficial germs, known as the mother’s microbiome.
According to Dr. Martin Blaser, director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine at Rutgers University, missing out on the normal microbiome affects each child’s immune system differently.
"If they had a certain kind of high-risk micropattern, they were maybe three times as likely to develop asthma compared to kids born vaginally and kids born by C-section who had a low-risk model,” he said. “So developing these prediction models based on the microbes these babies are carrying is teaching us a lot about the relationship between the microbes we carry and the risk for disease, especially asthma in young children.”
Understanding that risk may help researchers find a way to prevent the problem, he noted.
“This information in the future might help us predict which kids are going to be at risk for asthma in childhood just on based on getting a swab from their diaper,” he explained. “This may help us understand how we can prevent asthma just by changing their microbe composition or maybe giving them some new probiotics.”
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one-third of all births are by C-section.