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Comment
. 2019 Feb 12;7(1):21.
doi: 10.1186/s40168-019-0640-7.

Reply Re: "Amniotic fluid from healthy term pregnancies does not harbor a detectable microbial community"

Affiliations
Comment

Reply Re: "Amniotic fluid from healthy term pregnancies does not harbor a detectable microbial community"

Efrem S Lim et al. Microbiome. .

Abstract

How and when a newborn is first colonized by microbes continues to be of great interest due to its broad implications on human health and disease. Payne et al. express their opinion about our recent study in which we characterized the virome and bacterial microbiota of amniotic fluid from 24 uncomplicated term pregnancies. We conducted additional validation studies and respond to their comments. We conclude that in amniotic fluid from healthy term pregnancies, the bacterial microbiota is indistinguishable from contamination controls, and there is no evidence of a core virome.

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Conflict of interest statement

Ethics approval and consent to participate

The institutional review board at Washington University School of Medicine approved the study. Subjects provided informed consent to be included in the Women and Infants Health Specimen Consortium biobank at Washington University.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Bacterial 16S rRNA quantitative PCR. 16S rRNA gene copies per reaction were quantified in two amniotic fluid specimens in which one aliquot was centrifuged and one was not, buffer (extraction negative controls) and water (reagent negative controls). Extraction and 16S rRNA gene qPCR protocols were identical to original study [6]. Statistical significance was determined by Mann-Whitney test. ns, non-significant

Comment on

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