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Bacterial flora of meconium and faeces during the first year of life

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Summary

Aerobic cultures were carried out in 100 samples of meconium and 65 samples of faeces from normal infants upto one year of age. Eighty-eight of the meconium samples were sterile while 12 contained a single type of organism. There wereEsch. coli (six cases),Staph. albus (5 cases and a yeast). In infants, breast feds had a single type of organism, most oftenEsch. coli. The bottle feds or those on both the breast and the bottle had a complex flora ofEsch. coli together with one other organism. The commonest wasStrep. faecalis (nine cases). A surprising finding was the occurrence of enteropathogenic strains ofEsch. coli in three of the infants one to three months old. These three infants had no symptoms. The organisms occurred in pure culture and the serotypes were 026, B6 (two cases) and 055, B5 (one case).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Microbiology, Grant Medical College, Byculla, 400 008, Bombay

    Kirthi Sunderarajan & S. S. Kelkar (Prof. and Head)

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  1. Kirthi Sunderarajan
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  2. S. S. Kelkar
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From the Department of Microbiology, The Grant Medical College, Bombay.

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Sunderarajan, K., Kelkar, S.S. Bacterial flora of meconium and faeces during the first year of life. Indian J Pediatr 46, 92–95 (1979). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02827357

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02827357

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