Despite the highly significant increase of microbiota diversity w

Despite the highly significant increase of microbiota diversity with age, the diversity indeces at 18 months of age are still relatively low (~110) when compared to the approximately two-fold higher indexes (150–200) commonly observed in healthy adults [32]. It has been suggested that by the age of 1 to 2 years the microbiota resembles that of an adult [29, 43]. Our results show that microbiota succession continues at least until the age of 18 buy Ibrutinib months and most likely

even further, because the bacterial diversity has still not reached the diversity of an adult person. Thus, significant changes can be expected to occur in even after 18 months of age. Concerning the microbiota composition at 6 months of age, our results are in agreement with earlier studies [5, 29], except that we observed significant colonization by bifidobacteria in most of the children (mean relative abundances 22.9% at 6 months

and 12.6% at 18 months of age, respectively) while in the study of Palmer et al. [29] Selleckchem R428 bifidobacteria were not detected, possibly due to differences in DNA extraction, PCR primers, demographic and geographic origin, dietary patterns of the infants or other confounding factors. Primers used for PCR are often not so optimal for bifidobacteria than for other species and thus, high GC bacteria may perform less well in such PCRs. Further, in our previous studies we have shown that mechanical lysis of faecal bacteria is essential and improves the detection of especially Gram-positive bacteria including bifidobacteria [32, 44]. In the Palmer et al. study [29], mechanical lysis by bead-beating was not applied, which may have hampered the detection of bifidobacteria. Thus, we consider that the Cell press most likely explanation for the different results concerning bifidobacteria in our and Palmer et al. [29] study is the different DNA extraction methods used. When comparing healthy and eczematous

children we found statistically significant differences in microbiota composition only at 18 months of age. The total microbiota of children with eczema was found to become significantly more diverse than the microbiota of children who remained healthy by 18 months of age. Interestingly, the total microbiota and particularly Firmicutes diversity was higher in the eczema group children, although the difference with the healthy subjects was not statistically significant. Abrahamsson et al. described the infants as having atopic eczema during the first two years of life (diagnostics were done at 6, 12 and 24 months of age), but the age at the onset of symptoms was not clarified [9]. However, it can be concluded from the Abrahamsson et al.

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