Original ArticleDynamics and Clinical Evolution of Bacterial Gut Microflora in Extremely Premature Patients
Section snippets
Methods
In this prospective, monocenter study, we included infants born at GA ≤30 weeks who were admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) before 48 hours of life and whose mother received antenatal steroids. Feeding started when the attending physician deemed it advisable, with 20 mL/kg/day of pasteurized human milk (HM). This was increased by 10 mL/kg/day until full enteral feeding (160 mL/kg/day) was reached. Pooled pasteurized HM was provided as long as infants weighed <1500 g. At that
Results
Of the 30 eligible consecutive infants included between Oct 1, 2006, and Mar 31, 2007, one was excluded from analyses because of early death from pericardial effusion on day 11. Characteristics of the study population are reported in Table I. Most infants were born before 28 weeks gestation (n = 16, 55.2%). One infant born after 27 weeks gestation had a NEC grade 2 on day 19. All the infants received pooled pasteurized HM for a median duration of 36 days (interquatile range [IQR], 25-38), with
Discussion
In this prospective study, the diversity of microflora changed progressively during the first 8 weeks of life, and most infants had staphylococci in their stools. Furthermore, we showed a positive relationship between the diversity of intestinal microflora, digestive tolerance, and weight gain. This longitudinal study included a large number of very preterm infants with fully documented clinical characteristics and microflora analysis on the basis of a recently validated molecular approach
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest.