PLoS ONE: The Gut as Reservoir of Antibiotic Resistance: Microbial Diversity of Tetracycline Resistance in Mother and Infant

“These findings reinforce the notion that the human GIT is currently a relevant environment for the spread of antibiotic resistances, even in the case of young infants that solely ingest maternal milk. Further analyses involving more mother-infant pairs will be required in order to establish whether the trends observed in this case study describe the general relationship between mother and infant antibiotic resistomes.”

This is really interesting. To me, mother-child form one closely tied ecosystem, so it’s not surprising that bacteria take advantage of that to move locations or capture resistance genes from other bugs. What’s good about a report like this is that it once again reinforces the need to re-evaluate the flow of organisms and information in the human-microbial ecosystem and implications for medicine and health.

Read this article…