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The study found that a mother mouse can pass along to her offspring a susceptibility to intestinal disorders, such as inflammatory bowel disease, by way of a gut-residing bacterium called Sutterella, the researchers reported in the journal Nature.
Scientists have long speculated that a mother can transfer beneficial bacteria to her offspring through the birthing process and then through breast-feeding and kissing. These myriad bacteria species quickly spread and cover an infant's skin, mouth and digestive tract.
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Inflammatory Bowel Disease
Inflammatory Bowel Disease
"The implications for mouse experiments are profound, and could help us cut through some persistent sources of confusion," in genetic research, said Dr. Thaddeus Stappenbeck, an immunologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a co-author of the new study.
Until now, most doctors have thought that IgA deficiency, seen in people with diseases such as chronic diarrhea, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, is primarily hereditary, meaning the deficiency is inherited through one's genes. The new finding suggests that bacterial forces transmitted from mother to infant also are at play, perhaps to a significant extent.
Comment: The colon harbors one of the densest microbial communities on the planet. For every human cell in your body, there are roughly 10 single-celled microbes, most of which live in the digestive tract. There are upwards of 5,600 separate species or strains feeding off the food we send to our stomachs, fine-tuning our immune systems, producing nutrients such as vitamin K and eating up our waste to prevent pathogens from taking over. When we take antibiotics, we reduce the resident beneficial bacterial population and increase out chances of gaining antibiotic-resistant strains of harmful bacteria.