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At 2 to 4 months of age, infants share on average just over a third of their gut microbiome—an ecosystem seeded at birth that plays a role in shaping their future health—with their mother's gut or vaginal microbiome. That microbial sharing is notably higher when a mother has a vaginal birth as opposed to a C-section delivery.

The findings, from a recent observational study led by the University of Colorado Anschutz, could offer more insight into why a child's risk of developing some diseases is more heavily weighted by a mother's predisposition to the disorders than a father's.

"If a mother has obesity, her child has a much higher risk of also having obesity," said Noel T. Mueller, Ph.D., a CU Anschutz School of Medicine professor of pediatrics. That's true of other metabolic and immune-mediated diseases, such as asthma and eczema, and the shared risk is not all attributable to genetics, said Mueller, lead author of the study published in Cell Reports.

"That led us to think about the microbiome." Understanding how this biological ecosystem of trillions of bacteria, viruses and other microbes develops and plays a role in human health could lead to evidence-based preventive measures.

The researchers' main goals were to understand how much of babies' microbiomes came from mom and from where, and whether those factors differed by delivery mode.

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