Hospital Regimens Including Probiotics Guide the Individual Development of the Gut Microbiome of Very Low Birth Weight Infants in the First Two Weeks of Life

Abstract

Probiotics proved to be safe and initiated an earlier increase of bacterial load (with marked individual divergences), which might play a crucial role in the prevention of neonatal morbidities. Meconium was found not to be free of bacterial DNA, and oral antibiotics did not influence the fecal microbiome development negatively, and hospital regimes led to a center-specific, distinct cluster formation.