"Do you offer vaginal implantation for newborns after a C-section here?"
A pregnant woman's question stumped a midwife with years of experience in the delivery room: "What? Vaginal implantation? Is that some new internet slang term?"
Then you're a bit out of touch! "Vaginal implantation" isn't new; there were already reports about it back in 2018.
This report tells us that "vaginal seeding" refers to using a cotton swab to apply fluid from the mother's vagina to the newborn's skin and mouth after delivery, hoping to boost the newborn's immunity.
After the report was published, most netizens overwhelmingly opposed the practice, raising questions about its effectiveness.
Come, let's take a look at this bizarre "vaginal seeding" method together.
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Is vaginal implantation beneficial to infant health ?
The rationale behind "vaginal seeding" is that infants activate their immune system within the first 100 days after birth, and the microorganisms they encounter during this time influence the formation of their immunity. Newborns born via cesarean section, having bypassed the birth canal, lack the beneficial flora found in the mother's vagina, which may lead to weakened immunity later in life and an increased risk of developing specific immune diseases such as asthma and allergies.
At this point, you might be wondering, what is the relationship between gut microbiota and diseases like asthma and allergies?
In fact, the type of bacteria in a baby's gut during the first 100 days after birth is associated with an increased risk of asthma. Research from the Canadian Centre for Infant Health and Development found that a decrease in the amount of *Trichophyton* in an infant's gut leads to an increased risk of developing specific asthma in childhood.
Another retrospective study from Oregon, USA, also found that compared with vaginally delivered babies, babies born by cesarean section had a 37% increased risk of developing allergic rhinoconjunctivitis (95% CI: 1.14-1.63) and a 24% increased risk of developing secondary asthma in the future (95% CI: 1.01-1.53).
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Let's go back to "vaginal seeding".
The first experiment went like this. Researchers tracked 18 babies, 7 of whom were born vaginally and 11 were born by cesarean section. The researchers then performed "vaginal seeding" on 4 of the cesarean section babies.
Within a minute of their birth, doctors took out gauze that had been placed in the mother's vagina before the cesarean section and quickly applied it to the baby to perform a microbial "transplantation".
As the researchers anticipated, within 30 days of birth, the gut, oral, and skin bacterial communities of these four newborns were rich in vaginal bacteria similar to those of vaginally delivered infants. Infants who did not undergo vaginal implantation had fewer similar bacterial communities.
But does this mean that vaginal implantation is actually beneficial to the baby's health?
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There are still too many uncertainties surrounding vaginal implantation.
In 2017, a study on "vaginal seeding" was published in a sub-journal of *Nature Drugs*. The article stated that no differences in gut microbiota were found between cesarean-born and vaginally-born infants within the first six weeks after birth. The authors indicated that any detectable differences at birth were limited to the skin and oral microbiome; there was no difference in gut flora between the two groups at birth.
A microbiology expert from New York University also stated, "I don't see what disease we're trying to treat or prevent from these experiments. The worst-case scenario is that we're not only increasing the risk of infection for infants, but also covering their faces with herpes virus."
That's a bit scary.
Some infectious disease experts believe that the impact of different delivery methods on offspring health may stem from other factors, such as the mother's antibiotic use during pregnancy, the infant's feeding method, and whether the infant has a genetic predisposition to obesity. Furthermore, the flora in the mother's vaginal fluid may differ from that in the birth canal, and the blood and amniotic fluid during delivery dilute the collected bacteria. These factors can all lead to different experimental results.
The doctor emphasized, "We do not recommend this practice at present. The pros and cons of 'vaginal seeding' need to be carefully considered, as this practice is likely to increase the infant's chances of infection with group B streptococci and Escherichia coli."
Some researchers are concerned that some mothers might imitate the practices in the experiments and perform vaginal implantation on their own infants. In 2017, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) issued guidelines specifically stating that vaginal implantation should not be performed on infants outside of clinical trials.
Therefore, it seems that "vaginal seeding" still lacks strong evidence of efficacy, and we still need to conduct a large number of large-scale randomized controlled trials.
Currently, the United States, Sweden, and China have all conducted relevant research on "vaginal seeding" in an attempt to establish a link between "vaginal seeding" and infant health.
Let's wait and see the experimental results.
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