Antibiotic Resistance Genes Discovered In Newborns’ Stool Within Days Of Birth, Researchers Find

Healio (5/6, Kellner) reports a study presented at ESCMID Global found that “antibiotic resistance genes were found in the stool of newborns within days of birth.” The research team “collected 105 meconium samples from infants who were admitted to the neonatal ICU within 24 hours of birth between July 2024 and July 2025 and extracted DNA samples from the stool to identify antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs).” They found that “each sample contained a median of eight ARGs. Nearly all samples had ARGs for quinolones, and one-third to one-half of samples contained beta-lactamases, the primary cause of resistance to beta-lactam antibiotics, including penicillin. One in five samples (21%) had genes resistant to carbapenems.” The researchers noted that “the odds of detecting ARGs for MRSA increased with a longer time until the stool sample was collected (OR = 1.1), and maternal hospitalization during pregnancy raised the odds of infants having the macrolide-streptogramin resistance gene more than fourfold.”