Study of Intestinal Microbiota in Infants With Colic
NewsJanuary 16, 2013
Recently Pediatrics published a highly interesting Dutch study on the development of the composition and the diversity of the intestinal microbiota during the first 100 days of life, comparing children with and without infant colic.
The main findings are that the colicky infants had less of bifidobacteria, lactobacilli and butyrate producing bacteria compared to controls. On the other hand they harbored more of potential pathogens like E. coli, Yersinia, Klebsiella, Pseudomonas and other. Remarkable was that this difference was significant during the first month of life, i.e. before the peak of colic appears, which is around week 6. At the end of the study period there were no significant differences between the groups.
In the discussion part of the paper the authors propose “that the excessive crying may be caused by increased inflammation by an increased level of pathogens and by a reduction in anti-inflammatory lactobacilli.”
Of interest is that most of the potential pathogens mentioned in this study are inhibited byLactobacillus reuteri, at least in laboratory trials.
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