Bacterial load in meconium

Imeta. 2024 Feb 13;3(1):e173. doi: 10.1002/imt2.173. eCollection 2024 Feb.

Abstract

The spike-in plasmid method was utilized to perform an analysis on meconium and second-pass feces, yielding both relative and absolute quantitative results. With the absolute quantitative data, the abundance of bacteria in 17 meconium samples and 17 second-pass fecal samples were found to be 1.14 × 107 and 1.59 × 109 copies/g, respectively. The mode of delivery can significantly influence the alterations and compositions of gut bacteria in a newborn within 72 h.