New study provides one of the most detailed portraits yet of how different combinations of bacteria in human milk contribute to infants’ gut microbiomes.

Most conversations about breast milk tend to focus on topics like nutrients, antibodies and bonding time rather than bacteria.

In this Consensus Statement, a consortium of microbiome scientists discuss current sequencing data sharing policies and propose the use of a Data Reuse Information (DRI) tag to promote equitable and collaborative data sharing.

This is the first study using detailed retrospective medication usage data from electronic health records to systematically assess the long-term effects of medication usage on the gut microbiome. We identified carryover and additive effects on the gut microbiome for a range of antibiotics and non-antibiotic medications, such as benzodiazepine derivatives, antidepressants and glucocorticoids, among others. These findings highlight a collateral effect of diverse drug classes on the gut microbiome, which warrants accounting for long-term medication usage history when assessing disease-microbiome associations.

Over the past decades, medication use has steadily increased worldwide, with individuals frequently taking multiple medications (polypharmacy), often repeatedly over extended periods of time (1). Yet,...

IntroductionHuman breast milk is a sophisticated and complex biological fluid that provides crucial nutritional, immunological, and microbial benefits to inf...