About three quarters of babies born in the United States may not have enough friendly microbes in their guts to protect against developing allergies, asthma and eczema, a new study suggests.
In a large study of more than 400 babies, 24 percent had no detectable levels of Bifidobacterium, gut microbes that digest sugars in breast milk, researchers report June 24 in Communications Biology. “Nondetectable levels of the most fundamental family type of bacteria for the infant was really surprising to us,” says Stephanie Culler, cofounder and chief executive of Persephone Biosciences, the San Diego–based company that conducted the study. “It was just not there.”
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